


Dandelion Clocks

by IndianSummer13



Series: all or nothing way of loving you [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: A Bit More Smut, Alcohol, F/M, First Time, Initially At Least, Less Mild Language, Light Angst, Mild Language, Minor Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper, More angst, New Girl!Betty, OOC Jughead, Questions Regarding Consent, Redemption, Serpent!Jughead, Slightly OOC Betty, Smut, Tattoos, Teen Angst, There's No Soft!Jughead In This One, You'll Probably Hate Him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-06-26 06:56:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15658089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: “Anygirl?” Sweet Pea scoffs. “The last one you slept with now prefers the fairer sex too.”Laughter rises from the group and Jughead shakes his head. “Not counting Toni, the Serpent Prince thing works with any girl -believeme.”His best friend’s lips curl into a smirk. “Prove it: fuck the North Side princess.”.Or, new-to-town Betty Cooper accompanies her sister to Riverdale’s only tattoo parlour - located on the South Side -  in an act of rebellion against their parents. There, she meets the brooding, dangerously attractive Jughead Jones, and unbeknownst to her, becomes embroiled in a bet that results in unexpected consequences.





	1. Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my new story. Just a little word of warning, for anyone expecting/hoping for a Scars-type Jughead, you won’t find him here ;)  
> If you’re still down for the ride, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Finally, there’s a soundtrack which has been made by Alisonrutherford (@alisoncolis on Tumblr - go follow her!) to accompany each chapter. Link is available on both of our Tumblr accounts

The day starts off as days do: cold air; stiff joints; the calling card of a girl on his collarbone. His dad is already up and making use of the trailer’s only bathroom, its lead pipes protesting at the early morning use of the shower. Jughead rolls over, his sheets at the other side of the bed even colder. Maybe, just until the winter is through, he should start letting girls stay over, he thinks. 

The pipes cease groaning and he pushes back the sheets, wincing at the threadbare carpet and the draft that seems to be winning out against the limited insulation of the floor. He passes his dad in what they both call the hallway, although in reality it’s little more than a half metre square from which the bathroom door leads off. 

“Morning,” FP says gruffly, his voice rough from the whiskey-sleep-American Legend cocktail of the previous night. 

Jughead only nods, not up for talking when there’s not yet coffee seated in his hand. 

The bathroom is fogged with heavy steam and he’s grateful for the fan which doesn’t work properly as he removes his t-shirt and boxers. The water is close to burning today - favourable to the sometimes lukewarm spray that never seems to rain down out of the showerhead properly - and he steps under it, closing his eyes as the water soothes his muscles. 

He stays under the water longer than usual - a treat for the weekend - but is forced to shut it off when his dad bangs on the bathroom door yelling about the water bill. There’s a fresh pot of coffee when he heads back to his bedroom to pull on clothes, no mug though (punishment, he guesses, for the extra-long shower). 

FP eyes his neck, the purple edges of a hickey visible near the collar of his flannel. “Thought I told you about those,” he says, sipping at his coffee. 

Jughead rubs a hand over the skin. “Yeah well.”  

“I didn’t raise you to let anyone brand you. You’re Serpent - that’s all.”

You didn’t raise me at all, Jughead thinks, but keeps the words stuffed deep inside until the hot liquid puts them out, nothing but steam left.

“Nobody misses the jacket and the tattoos,” he replies instead, and his dad nods, seemingly satisfied. 

They drink the rest of their coffees in silence until a stone against the trailer’s door alerts him to the time. 

“Shit.”

“Tell that boy from me,” FP warns as Jughead pulls on his jacket. “God gave him hands to knock, not to throw stones with.”

He doesn’t reply, just heads to the door without a glance back until his dad says, “Mug in the sink.”

Outside, the air is freezing, tornadoes of cigarette smoke forming from Sweet Pea’s exhales. He hands Jughead one wordlessly, followed by his lighter, and they smoke their way to their respective bands before either speak.

“My dad wants you to knock.”

Sweet Pea shrugs. “Tell him his son needs to be better at being on time.”

“Why don’t you stay at your own trailer for an extra minute?” he counters.

He shrugs again. “You know how it is.”

Yeah, he thinks. He does. 

By the time they reach the Whyte Wyrm, they find Toni is already there, cleaning down the bar with some song Jughead hasn’t heard blasting over the speakers. 

“Spending some of that sexual tension?” Sweet Pea asks, and it earns him the middle finger. “I still can’t believe you chose the state’s straightest town to be a lesbian in.”

“Like the options for dating guys around here are any better,” Toni replies. “No offence Jug.”

“None taken,” he says - and means it. “Did you make breakfast?”

“Waffle iron broke,” she tells them. “So it’s only eggos.”

They’re already cold - no real surprise - and there isn’t any syrup for them to have. They take two each, Jughead lifts his up by way of thanks, and then he and Sweet Pea head next door to the tattoo parlour. 

It’s almost pointless to open up so early in the day at this time of year, but the Wyrm Hole is warmer than any of their trailers, so the less-than-favourable start time doesn’t seem such a bad trade off in the grand scheme of things. Sweet Pea puts on the sound system, fiddling with the wires until the crackling in the speaker on the back wall isn’t quite so noticeable. 

“Gotta get that fixed,” he says, and Jughead shrugs. 

“It’ll do for now.”

He holds his second waffle in his mouth as he wipes down the chair with the sterile wipe, repeating the same action with the wood shelf that runs along the full length of the wall beneath the mirror. It’s perpetually sticky due to the varnish that melts when the summer heat hits, and considering he did all of this yesterday, it’s probably a waste of time.

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead is sketching the delicate curve of a compass design, eyes squinting due to the dark walls absorbing what little light the clouds are allowing through, when he hears tyres crunching on the icy ground outside. 

“Check it out,” Sweet Pea mutters. “Northsiders.”

He lifts his head, taking in the silver Mercedes, and drops it again, beginning work on the dial. The door opens, dragging in a sweep of cruel air, but he doesn’t remove his eyes from the paper, figuring Sweet Pea can ink the design of a heart or a star onto whoever it is. 

“Ladies,” he greets, and Jughead can hear the smile in his voice.  

He  _ does _ look up then, the plural catching his attention. He’s fucked up the design anyway, keeping the dial too straight when it should’ve had something of a curve for its tip. 

Jughead has one overwhelming thought when he catches sight of his customers: he’s never seen that much pastel in one room before. On closer inspection though, he notices the blonde hair and the blue eyes and the hesitance that only comes from being somewhere they shouldn’t. 

Good girls going bad, he thinks.  _ Interesting. _

“Can we help you?” he asks, setting down the pen in his hand and making his way to the front of the parlour. 

One of the girls - the one with long straight hair held back by a lilac headband - speaks. “I’m here to get a tattoo.”

The other one - her hair pulled tight into a ponytail whose ends skirt the base of her neck when she shakes her head - says nothing.

“What about you?” Jughead asks. 

“Oh,” she stutters. “No, I’m just… here.”

Her cheeks grow pink and he feels his lips twitch. Her fingers are curled into fists: she’s nervous. 

“You have a design in mind?” Sweet Pea asks the other girl.

“Yes. I want a nine on my wrist,” she returns, her voice steady. 

He can see Sweet Pea’s smirk. “Boyfriend’s jersey?”

The girl with the ponytail gasps quietly, her eyes widening and it’s then that Jughead realises they’re green rather than blue like he’d initially assumed. 

“Yes,” she says. “How’d you know?”

Such a fucking cliche, he thinks. Sweet Pea shrugs. “Intuition.” 

“You’ve gotta fill out a form,” he tells her, grabbing the paperwork from the back drawer. “And then we can get started on the design.”

“The design?”

“Everything’s bespoke. No generic tattoos here. You tell Jug what you’re after and he’ll draw it for you, see if you’re happy with it.”

“But I can get it today right?” she asks. “I need it today.”

Sweet Pea’s lips curve into another smirk. “Parents out of town?”

The girls share a look and Jughead hands over the form. “Look, we don’t care if you have permission or not. All you’re doing is signing this to say you’re not gonna sue us if you don’t like it.”

“Right,” she affirms, taking the paperwork and pen he offers. The girl with the ponytail unclenches her fists to touch her sister’s arm. 

“Are you sure Pol? I mean…” her eyes flick to his as she lowers her voice to say the next part of her sentence. Jughead hears it anyway. “It doesn’t look all that clean.”

“Needles are sterile,” he tells them, and the pink in her cheeks turns almost crimson. 

“I… I didn’t mean…”

He shrugs. “Let me know when you’ve decided.”

He turns his attention back to the compass, restarting the design with a mental reminder not to make the dial too straight. Every-so-often, he finds himself glancing to the girl with the ponytail who’s now gnawing on her bottom lip like she’s afraid they’re all about to get busted. He figures it  _ could _ happen (it would be Serpent luck after all) but eventually, the girl he assumes is her sister has filled out the form and is handing it back to Sweet Pea who says,

“Come on though to the back,” as though the whole space isn’t visible from the front of the shop.  

They crowd the space near the chair and Jughead is forced to put down his pen again, what little light the windows let in all but blocked by the three of them. 

“A nine,” Sweet Pea announces like he hasn’t just heard the whole conversation at the other end of the room. His eyes are wide and mocking, and Jughead feels his lips twitch in response. 

“So,” he starts. “How big a nine are we talking? You want straight lines? Curved? Woven with something?”

“Oh.” The girl looks startled. “Can you just… I mean, we don’t have loads of time. There’s a charity bake sale at -”

“- Of course,” Jughead cuts in. “Forgot about that.” He lifts his head in Sweet Pea’s direction. “What kind of cookies did you make?”

Without missing a beat, he replies. “Chocolate chip.”

Jughead shakes his head. “Amatuer.”

The girl with the ponytail makes some sort of expression he can’t read at her sister or friend or whoever the hell the other girl is. “What?”

“Oh,” she gasps, almost like she’s been caught out. “I just wouldn’t have thought people who run a tattoo place would be into bake sales - that’s all.”

“Baked goods don’t discriminate,” he tells her. “What’s not to love?”

“I made vanilla cupcakes,” she tells him. 

_ Of course you did, _ Jughead thinks, and prods his tongue against his cheek, rubbing his hand over his face. Prom Princess is making it too easy. 

“Polly made brownies.”

“The good kind?” Sweet Pea asks, and both girls frown. 

Guess they can take that as a no.

“The design,” Jughead reminds them. “Size, lines, features.”

Polly Cooper, age seventeen of 111 Elm Street (he doubts she’s had the sense to lie on her form) chooses a design no larger than a dime. The lines are curved and spaced with tiny stars, and she gasps when she sees the completed drawing on paper.   

“Look Betty,” she says, indicating the drawing. “Don’t you think Jason will love it?”

So the ponytail owner is Betty, Jughead thinks. These girls are a literal walking stereotype. She doesn’t answer, and so he turns to her too.

“ _ Well _ Betty?” he says. “ _ Won’t _ he?”

She flushes and makes a bad job of the lie she tells that  _ of course he will. _

“We can get started,” Sweet Pea announces, and Jughead leaves them to it, grabbing his pen and paper and moving to the other side of the room for the better dispersion of light.

He keeps half an eye on his friend, watching as he traces the design onto the pale skin of Polly’s wrist. His attention flickers occasionally to Betty, who watches the whole process with her teeth sunken into her bottom lip, and then back to his current design: a snake heart. She gasps at the sound of the gun whirring into life, and the whole scene makes Jughead want to laugh aloud. He doesn’t, exercising what little self-control he’s been given, and keeps his head down instead. 

A little over two hours after their customers first arrived, the gun buzzes to a stop and there’s a clatter as Sweet Pea sets it down on the metal tray. 

“That’s it,” he says casually. 

Polly makes to get up off of the chair but he stops her with a, “Hang on - you need the cream.”

Jughead slides the pot down towards him but continues working on the heart, shading in a section of the edge. He hears him tell Polly about the protective barrier the cream will provide before giving her instructions of how and when to apply it, then registers him taking a square of gauze to cover her wrist. 

“Keep it out of any water,” he warns “And if you have a reaction, you already signed the paperwork to say you can’t sue us.”

“I did?” she asks, and Jughead shakes his head to himself.

“You should always read the fine print.” 

Polly pays with cash, beginning to look a little more nervous than she’d been previously as Sweet Pea roots around for some change. It’s then that Jughead realises she’s paid with a hundred dollar bill. It piques his interest - not because he’s never seen a hundred dollar bill (his father has had a worrying amount of them stashed in the freezer at certain points in time) but because no seventeen-year-olds work legal jobs to be paid with those notes. 

“You must be new round here,” Sweet Pea says as he gives her the twenty change. “Haven’t seen you before.”

“We just moved over Christmas break,” Polly tells them. “We live on -”

“The North Side,” he cuts in. “I got that from your address.”

“Right,” she says. “And do you live here too? In Riverdale I mean?”

“South Side born and bred baby.”

There’s an awkward pause which nobody fills until Betty takes a breath and suggests, “We should get going Polly. The sale starts in less than an hour and we need to deliver everything.” She lifts her head, finally tearing her attention away from the cuffs of her coat she’s been intent on picking at. “Maybe we’ll see you there?”

“I’ll be the one eating all the produce,” Jughead tells her. From the corner of his eye, he can see his friend raising his brows, a smirk pulling at his lips. “Perhaps you can save me one of your cupcakes.”

“Sure.” She’s looking at his neck as she replies, and he has the sudden urge to tug at the collar of his flannel to make sure the hickey is hidden. 

Both girls offer the kind of polite goodbyes their wasp parents will have no doubt instilled in them since before they went to kindergarten, and the cold air bites in at the door again as they leave. 

Jughead resumes his drawing and Sweet Pea wipes down the chair after disposing of the needle. When he’s done, he blows out a breath.

“We’re not actually going to this fucking bake sale are we?”

“Of course not,” he returns, barely looking up.

“You seemed pretty convincing, that’s all.”

“I was messing with her.”

“Yeah?” Sweet Pea asks. “Looks like you wanted to try her frosting if you ask me.” 

“I  _ didn’t _ ask you.”

He senses rather than sees the shrug his friend gives, and focuses a little harder on the eyes at the top of the heart.

  
  
  
  
  


Toni joins Jughead, Sweet Pea and Fangs at their lunch table the following Tuesday, holding her phone out like she’s won some sort of prize. 

“What?” Sweet Pea asks, shoving in a chip and crunching with his mouth open. Jughead sticks his fork into the school’s attempt at meatloaf and vaguely registers the Facebook page of someone who looks to be a cheerleader.

“Cheryl Blossom’s having a party Friday night.”

This piques his interest. Nobody on the North Side has ever invited Serpents to their parties - and vice versa - but nobody’s ever really turned them away either. At least, nobody’s ever turned _ him _ away.

“So what, you’re going to try scissoring your way into the heart of the ice queen?” Fangs asks, which earns him a pretty heavy punch in the arm from Toni.

“You’re disgusting. Why am I even friends with you?”

“Charity,” Sweet Pea responds, and they all laugh. 

Jughead takes the phone from Toni’s hand and looks at the details. On the invite list, he spots a name that makes him pause in his scrolling: Polly Cooper - the girl who asked for the number nine tattoo the previous weekend. He clicks on her profile and discovers that she’s part of Riverdale High’s cheerleading squad: a quick turnaround, he decides, considering she hasn’t been in the town much longer than a few weeks. Her sister though - the one with the tight ponytail - doesn’t seem to have an invite. He continues scrolling along the guest list, noting the usual suspects.

“You coming?” Toni asks. 

“To watch you try and convince Cheryl Blossom she isn’t straight? Definitely.”

She rolls her eyes. “Nobody on that list catch your eye Jones?”

He grins and shovels in the last forkful of meatloaf. “One or two.”  

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead has been to Thornhill a couple of times - none of them as an invited guest. Tonight is no exception, though he’s aware of something brewing between his friend and the head cheerleader, so it’s unlikely he’ll be turned away. Even if he is, he figures there’ll be somewhere to go with one of the girls Cheryl actually  _ has  _ invited, so all won’t be lost. He’d quite like front-row seats to the Toni-Cheryl denial-fest though.

There are already a lot of people there when they enter the hallway with its imposing mahogany staircase and chandelier. Jughead wonders whether any of the Riverdale High girls he’s had in his bed have worked out that his entire trailer would probably fit in Thornhill’s entrance hall. 

Sweet Pea and Fangs make a beeline for the kitchen where the drinks are, but Toni goes a little slower, surveying her surroundings, and Jughead stays by her side. It’s hot and they haven’t even made it to the living room yet. He wonders if it’s intentional - people wear much less when they’re not cold - but he keeps his jacket on, the leather cuffs seated at his wrist something of comfort while he hasn’t got anything in his hand. Toni is playing her part as the stereotypical bad girl well: tiny plaid skirt, biker boots, no tights, barely-there red cropped top under her Serpent jacket - and lots of heads turn as they reach the kitchen some way behind their other two friends. 

Jughead sees Archie Andrews over by the drinks table, holding a red solo cup and wearing his letterman jacket as he laughs at something Reggie Mantle says. He’s never quite worked out how he feels about Riverdale’s golden boy: all-star athlete and musician, but he knows he’s not on the same dick level as Reggie and Chuck Clayton. Their fathers had worked together once (or, more accurately,  _ his _ father had worked  _ for _ Fred Andrews) but that had ended badly - no doubt due to FP’s overriding love for alcohol - and none of them speak now. Besides, he has the Wyrm anyway. All’s good.

_ -ish. _

Sweet Pea and Fangs have overlooked the keg in favour of the harder liquor, and Toni pours a vodka and coke for herself, then a coke for him. 

“Thanks,” he says, taking a sip with unvoiced appreciation that Cheryl has bought the real stuff - not the shitty store-brand mixers they have on the South Side. Nobody there can afford to pay double for something most people are drinking only to take away that sharp bite of alcohol anyway. Even the Wyrm doesn’t bother with anything other than what’s on tap.

“No girls in here,” Toni murmurs to him, when what she really means is  _ Cheryl isn’t in here so let’s go elsewhere. _

They head in the direction of the living room and find exactly what they’re looking for. The music that’s been loud enough throughout the rest of the house is practically thumping now, changing the rhythm of his heartbeat so it follows the baseline of Wild For the Night.

He watches everything unfold before him: grinding, kissing,  _ more _ than kissing, high fives, laughing, jostling, and then comes something he doesn’t expect. Betty Cooper, dressed somewhat differently to how she’d been the previous weekend - though still in pastel, crosses the makeshift dance floor with a red cup grasped tightly in her right hand. Her sister is by her side but finds her friends pretty soon after, leaving her alone at the edge of the room.

Jughead observes her for a long time, intrigued by her attendance here when she looks like she’d rather be anywhere else (probably at home baking those cupcakes of hers and wearing full-length pajamas no doubt) until eventually, she strikes up a conversation with a girl he doesn’t know. He takes a sip of the coke and as he’s about to leave to get a refill, Ginger Lopez joins him against the wall at which he’s resting. It’s a short discussion - the topic simply the time at which he’ll be leaving so she can leave with him - and then she departs again, trailing her hand down his chest until her fingers reach his belt buckle. He’s never really sure if he’s supposed to feel something like those chills every stupid teen movie insinuates when girls do that. He doesn’t - and that’s okay - but he  _ does _ offer a wink in Ginger’s direction.

“Catch you later, Jones,” she says, and he smiles to himself as he drains the remainder of the liquid in his cup. 

  
  
  
  
  


There’s a queue for the bathroom. There’s always a queue for the bathroom at parties, and Jughead decides to bypass the other people waiting politely in line in favour of finding somewhere else he can pee. This isn’t Sunnyside: there’s  _ definitely _ more than one toilet in a house this size. Of course, he finds a second bathroom at the far end of the hall, and then, on his way back, he finds something - or some _ one _ \- in the doorway between the hall and the living room.

It’s Betty Cooper again, only this time, she’s a little more animated. She catches his eye and then narrows hers. “I didn’t see you at the bake sale the other day.”

She’s drunk. He finds a grin twitching at his lips. “Something came up.”

One of her eyebrows rises and she takes a sip out of her cup. He finds himself wondering what’s in there. “I saved you a cupcake you know. And I could’ve sold it.”

There’s a small pang of something in his chest at her response, but he ignores it. Guilt - if that’s what it is - is a useless emotion. “Next time,” he says. “Your parents find out about your sister’s tattoo yet?”

She shakes her head, blonde waves tumbling around her shoulders. “She’s good at hiding things.”

It’s his turn to raise his eyebrow. “But you’re a good girl right? No tattoos for you.”

“I snuck out to this party,” she half-slurs. “And I’m not allowed to drink alcohol.”

“Guess you broke the rules then too,” he says.

Betty nods and lifts her cup slightly. “Yep.”

He opens his mouth to ask why she hadn’t gotten a tattoo herself, but she drains what’s in her cup, looks at the bottom of the plastic with a disappointed expression and announces,

“I need more beer.”

She leaves before he can say anything else. 

Toni, Sweet Pea and Fangs are seated on the couch so he joins them, squeezing between the two guys. 

“What was that?” Toni asks with lifted brows.

“What?”

“Did  _ you _ just get turned down by a girl?”

“No.”

“First Topaz, now Betty Cooper,” Sweet Pea laughs. “You’re losing your touch Jones.” 

“I wasn’t even trying,” he argues. “And fuck you because Ginger Lopez came to find me to see what time I’m leaving.”

“Ginger Lopez would find  _ anybody. _ Admit it - you were dangling the bait and she didn’t take it.”

“We talked about the  _ bake sale, _ ” Jughead huffs, at which the guy next to him laughs like a fucking idiot. 

“Maybe the era of the Serpent Prince is over.”

“That shit works with any girl Sweet Pea - don’t act like you’re ignorant to that.”

“ _ Any _ girl?” he scoffs. “The last one you slept with now prefers the fairer sex too.”

Laughter rises from the group again and Jughead shakes his head. “Not counting Toni, the Serpent Prince thing works with  _ any _ girl -  _ believe _ me.”

His best friend’s lips curl into a smirk. “Prove it.” He nods his head in Betty’s direction. “Fuck the North Side princess.”


	2. Rebellion

Pop Tate makes the best strawberry milkshakes Betty has ever tasted in her sixteen years on earth. The sleet outside smacks against the window of the booth she’s seated at and then slides sadly downwards, gathering in a grey mush on the narrow ledge. 

“Can I get you anything else?” Pop asks as he’s returning from delivering a basket of fries to Cheryl Blossom at the far end of the diner. 

“No thank you,” she smiles politely. “I should be heading back soon before my mom worries.”

He nods and resumes his usual spot behind the counter with a cloth in his hand. Betty takes another sip of her milkshake, long and slow and satisfying, the sweet creamy milk and then the tang of the strawberry hitting her tastebuds as the doorbell chimes and somebody else enters.

That somebody is Jughead Jones, dressed in the leather jacket she’s never not seen him wear despite the awful weather. He has the same grey crown knit beanie on his head too, almost like, combined with the jacket, it’s his uniform. 

“Your usual?” Pop asks him, and he nods with a polite “Thanks Pop,” that she doesn’t expect.

She vaguely remembers seeing him at Cheryl Blossom’s party only a few nights ago, maybe on her way back from the bathroom where she’d been passing time with her beer that’d been too warm and too sour and too far from the taste of this milkshake sitting in front of her. She’d been drunk. Drunk enough that she’d slept in her clothes. Drunk enough that her head had been sore the following morning. Drunk enough that she doesn’t think she wants to drink beer anymore for a while. 

Betty had seen Jughead later too, laughing with his friends and standing smugly as a few girls had done a much better job of flirting with him than she imagines she might be able to manage. 

He turns his head in her direction, their eyes meeting and it’s too late for her to pretend she hadn’t been looking. She quickly glances down at her milkshake; her hands; the table - anything as she feels the colour rise high in her cheeks at getting caught - and then, when she chances a look back at the counter again, he’s no longer there.

“Hi.” His voice to her left makes her jump: she hadn’t realised that in leaving the counter, he’d taken up a place beside her booth. His lips are twitching into something that’s almost like a grin. 

“H - Hi.”

“Mind if I sit?” he asks, already settling in the seat across from her anyway. Betty’s aware of her heart pounding loud in her ears and she wonders if, somehow, Jughead can hear it too. “No burger?” His fingers extend from the fists they’re curled into, red and sore-looking from the cold.

“I already ate - fillet mignon and grilled veggies.”

His lips twitch again - but not with amusement this time - and Betty cringes internally. He hadn’t asked what she’d eaten.

“So are you busy later?” 

She wonders what he means by  _ later. _ It’s already nearing seven-thirty on a school night. She should probably study for the math test she has next week and she supposes a little more research on her history paper wouldn’t go amiss either.

“I have homework.”

“Oh,” Jughead says, fingers inching towards the tall glass containing what’s left of her milkshake. “Shame.”

Again, she isn’t sure what he means by that. 

“What about Friday night?” he asks. “Are you doing homework then?”

“I…” A dark wave of his hair slips slowly forward from his beanie, coming to an eventual stop across his forehead - almost in his eyes - and Betty swallows. “I don’t think so.”

“There’s a party at the Whyte Wyrm. Bring your sister if you like.”

It sounds very much like an invitation, but she finds there’s a trickle of disappointment running through her, like maybe she’d been expecting something else.  Something more personal than _ there’s a party. _ But still. 

“Okay,” she nods. “I’ll… talk to Polly.”

Pop calls his name, lifting a paper bag which is already outlined with grease along the bottom. Her mouth waters. 

“Enjoy your homework Betty,” Jughead tells her in a tone she thinks might be slightly mocking, but she can’t be sure. She doesn’t say anything in response, just toys with her straw as he takes the bag from the man behind the counter before handing over some crumpled bills.

The bell chimes as he leaves and she bends her head to suck up the last mouthful of milkshake.   

  
  
  
  
  


“We didn’t move here from New York so you could stay out all hours Elizabeth!” Alice scolds as Betty closes the front door against the freezing air. “It’s a school night.” She sighs and Betty looks towards the stairs. “Please tell me you weren’t at that diner again.”

“I only had a milkshake mom,” she replies as she unbuttons her coat. “And I was invited out but I  _ chose _ to come back here to study.”

“I should think so,” Alice half-spits, hand on her hip and practically disgusted that entertaining the idea would even be an option. “I mean, what kind of parent lets their child run around at this hour on a school night?”

The question is rhetorical, but still Betty has to force herself not to say  _ Jughead Jones’ parents - that’s who.  _ “I’m going to grab a shower before I start on my math revision,” is what she actually says, and doesn’t wait for any response before heading upstairs towards her room.

Polly is waiting in the hallway, left eyebrow arched, and nods with her head towards her room, quickly closing the door behind them. 

“Was it a boy?”

“What?”

“Was it a  _ boy  _ who invited you out somewhere tonight?” she hisses in an excited whisper.

“You were listening?”

“Please Betty, mom and dad didn’t have the decorators lay carpet on the stairs for a reason. I couldn’t _ help _ but overhear.”

“It was Jughead.”

“Jughead?” she questions, pausing for a moment. And then. “From the tattoo parlour?!”

Betty nods. 

“Oh my God! Where did he want to take you?”

“I don’t know. I told him I had homework.”

“You should sneak out and go find him,” her sister says. “I can cover if mom suspects.”

Not that she’d likely be able to find him anyway, but it doesn’t sound like the best of plans. “I really  _ should _ do my math revision.”

Polly sighs dramatically. “Hot boy versus algebra. Tough choice. You know he belongs to some gang right? The Serpents?”

She  _ has _ heard - vaguely at least - but has no idea what that entails. Something potentially illegal, she suspects, but decides not to think too much about it. “He said there’s a party over at the Whyte Wyrm on Friday night. I think he invited me. Or… us, I guess.”

“He did? What time?”

“He didn’t say.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

She shrugs but feels foolish. “I guess I didn’t think.” (She guesses she was more hung up on the fact that there was someone in this town who’d found her interesting enough to talk to)

“Well we can find out. Maybe Cheryl’s going - I’ll ask her at practice,” her sister decides. 

“Hey Pol,” Betty starts as she heads towards the door. “Did you hear from Jason tonight?”

For the first time, her sister looks less enthused; more downcast. “I think he’s busy with football practice.”

“Oh,” she replies quietly. “Okay.”

In the shower, under the pressure of the hot water, Betty finds herself picturing Jughead’s eyes and Jughead’s lips and Jughead’s fingers. It’s almost alarming how detailed the images are considering the time she’s spent with him. With a great deal of effort, she just about manages to shift her focus to simultaneous equations and works harder still not to think about sapphire blue. 

  
  
  
  
  


Friday night arrives. Betty overhears Polly concocting some ridiculous story about the two of them heading out to a basketball game in Riverdale High’s gymnasium. Betty isn’t even sure their school  _ has _ a basketball team.

“Sometimes, people meet afterward,” her sister says. “Just to hang out.”

She hears their mom sigh and say, “If you’re going to that diner, just remember how many calories are in a milkshake and fries.”

“I promise I’ll still fit in my cheerleading uniform in the morning mom,” Polly says, and then heads back up the stairs again towards where Betty is listening. 

“You think she bought it?” she asks.

Her older sister shrugs. “Who cares. Now go get changed.”

It takes Betty close to an hour to decide on her outfit (a shirt that’s one of her favourites and a pink skirt she’d bought on one of the last weekends they’d still been in New York City) but she fights the urge to pull her hair into a ponytail, leaving it to tumble against her shoulders instead. 

They get out without Alice forcing them to put on winter coats too, and Betty counts it as a success once they’re pulling out of the driveway and towards the South Side. 

  
  
  
  
  


She tugs the hem of her skirt down but still feels too exposed as they cross the dark parking lot towards the building pumping music loud enough that Betty feels it in her veins. She wishes she’d worn tights - the harsh, biting cold nipping at her bare legs - but it’s too late to change now that they’re already here.

She glances quickly back at the car, which is rather conspicuous amidst the row of black motorcycles parked outside the Wyrm - and then walks towards the entrance.

Inside of the bar, the air is significantly warmer, hot and sticky under cheap halogen lighting and the odd neon sign spelling out certain types of liquor. 

Across the room, Betty spots a group of men wearing the same jacket she always sees on Jughead, though none are accompanied by a grey crown beanie. It’s very evident however, as the group turn to look at her and Polly, that this is Serpent territory. It sets her pulse racing and her heart feels like it’s beating in her throat at the sheer exciting danger of it all.

Polly takes her hand. “C’mon, let’s get a drink.”

Behind the bar is a girl Betty recognises from the party at Cheryl Blossom’s house the previous week. She doubts she’s old enough to legally serve alcohol, but something tells her that doesn’t matter here.

“Vodka cranberry please?” Polly chances, and the girl behind the counter flicks her pink-tipped braid with a smirk.

“No cranberry here.”

“Oh,” Polly replies. “Then maybe club soda?”

“And you?” she asks Betty. “The same?”

“Oh no, I’m driving,” she garbles quickly. “I’ll um… I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

Their drinks are presented, unceremoniously, a few minutes later in plastic glasses, and both Betty and Polly take them quickly. She finds, as an ice cube clinks against her teeth, that despite the hot, thick air she’s still a little cold.

Over the speakers, a song with a heavy baseline starts up, and as if it’s a backing track for his entrance, Betty sees Jughead - dressed in head-to-toe black save for the grey crown beanie - descend the stairs at the far end of the bar. He glances out beyond the crowd of people and catches her eye. Unlike when he’d last seen her at Pop’s, this time Betty doesn’t look away.

He doesn’t head towards her and Polly straight away, chatting to a group of friends that includes Sweet Pea, the tall tattooist they’d met two weeks ago, and another shorter boy with dark hair and olive skin. 

Throughout the time it takes her to finish her drink, Betty finds her eyes wandering to Jughead. Each time a round of laughter rises from the group, her head seems to whip around automatically. She can sense his eyes on her too - every now and again - and she feels her cheeks heat up and a flush creep up her neck at the thought of him looking her way.

At the bar, the girl from earlier is chatting with the captain of Riverdale High’s Vixens, and if Betty didn’t know any better, she’d say they were flirting. She waits patiently as the she bends suggestively to collect an empty glass, setting it in the dishwasher with a precise display of the top of her stockings before taking the order for Betty’s second Diet Coke.

“Did Jughead talk to you yet?” she asks, catching her off guard. 

She blinks, confused. “No. Um… what… what did he want to talk to me about?”

The girls shrugs and refills Betty’s used glass. Her eyebrow lifts as a smile tugs at her lips, and then she says, “Guess you’re about to find out.”

Unsure of what she means, Betty turns around, only to collide with a hard chest. Jughead’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” she apologises. “I didn’t realise -”

“- Don’t be. Maybe I was standing too close.”

She can smell leather and musk. A hint of pine - maybe soap - and the lingering aroma of cigarette smoke. He smells dangerous, she thinks.

Maybe (quite possibly) he is. 

“I’m pretty sure it was my fault,” she says, and the corner of his mouth picks up. 

“You’re not drinking?”

“I’m designated driver,” she jokes. He doesn’t laugh.

“You wanna go somewhere quieter?” he asks as a new song starts up over the speakers. “To talk.”

Betty’s read about boys like him and lines like that in magazine articles about first loves and broken hearts. “To talk?” she reaffirms.

He nods. “Toni commandeered the playlist and her taste isn’t what I had in mind.”

The last thing Betty is expecting is for him to grab her hand, but he does, linking their fingers so she can feel the press of his palm against hers. His skin is softer than she’d imagined (and only then does she realise that she _ has _ imagined how it might feel against hers) and the cuff of his jacket brushes against her wrist. It makes her heart jump and she searches for Polly in the crowd. 

She finds her half a minute later, talking to Sweet Pea and looking a little too much like she doesn’t have a boyfriend back in New York. Their eyes meet, a grin widening on her older sister’s lips, and then she’s heading out of a door and into a hallway.

“Wasn’t sure you’d come,” Jughead says in the relative quiet, resting back against the brick. He has a glass of what looks like coke in his hand too, only Betty suspects it might contain something a lot stronger. 

“Why not?” she asks, in a rare foray into bravery.

He shrugs. “Thought there might be an essay on the French Revolution that needed your attention.”

She swallows. “Not tonight.”

“So I have you all to myself?” His voice has dropped an octave and her heart beats harder. Faster.

It’s a question she doesn’t dare answer.

“There aren’t many people from Riverdale High here,” she says eventually.

“Northsiders.”

“ _ I’m _ a Northsider.”

Jughead steps closer. “You’re different.”

Again, he steps closer still, squeezing the last inch of space between them. His breath is warm and she can feel it on her skin. Her mouth is desert-dry.

“How?” she somehow manages.

His index finger extends beyond the fist hidden beneath his jacket, and grazes the waistband of her skirt. Her stomach somersaults.

“The pastel.” With the smallest of steps, he closes the last inch between them, and leans in so that his exhaled breaths fan out and burn across her lips. “So. Much. Fucking. Pastel.”

His finger is tilting her chin upwards towards his mouth when all of a sudden, a man who looks to be in his early to mid forties comes crashing through the door, almost knocking into them. He tumbles against the wall instead and she sees Jughead wince before he says, abruptly, 

“You should go back to your sister.”

“Jug…” the man mumbles, and she sees Jughead’s hold on his arm tighten so that the finger which had been grazing her skin only seconds ago is now white with the force of his grip. 

“Do you want me to bring some water?” she asks, but he shakes his head. 

“I’ve got it.”

Betty watches as he half-hauls the man down the hallway and through a door marked ‘private’. As he’d suggested, she heads back to the party.  

Her heart, she realises at that moment, literally feels as though it’s camped out in her throat, the squeeze of each beat vibrating along her tongue. 

She’d wanted to kiss him; wanted to discover if he tastes how he smells. How he looks.

She thinks - had they not been interrupted - she might have found out.

Back in the bar, Polly is no longer talking with Sweet Pea, but Cheryl Blossom. Betty envies her sister sometimes: how easy it all seems to be. The friends, the boyfriend, the place on the cheerleading squad. So far, the only place in Riverdale she feels comfortable is in her favoured booth in Pop’s. 

  
  
  
  
  


They stay for another two hours but Jughead doesn’t return to the party, and as they climb back into the car she realises there’s a feeling low in her stomach that’s similar to what had been there the night at Pop’s when Jughead hadn’t invited her on a date, but to this party.

Disappointment.

Betty swallows it is best she can, reminding herself he’d never promised her anything. Tonight wasn’t a date. Wasn’t supposed to be anything other than what it had been.

“Pol?” she asks as she pulls the car into the driveway.

“Yeah?”

“Do I wear too much pastel?”

Her sister turns her head, eying the cream shirt and pink skirt combo. “You look good in pastel, Betty.”

“But…” she sighs. “Is it  _ too _ much? Should I wear more red? Or.... more black?”

“You should wear what you want to wear,” Polly replies. “And you look really pretty tonight.”

At the living room window, the curtain twitches. She turns the engine off and looks down at her lap wondering whether she’s supposed to look  _ pretty _ at somewhere like the Whyte Wyrm.

“C’mon,” she says. “Mom’s watching.”

  
  
  
  
  


The week passes as weeks in January do: slowly, and with a bitter wind that chaps Betty’s lips as she waits for the bus to take her to school and drop her home again. She heads upstairs from the low hum of the tv for an early shower, looking forward to a Friday night without any need to change her plans from curling up in bed with The Handmaid’s Tale and a mug of hot chocolate, and passes Polly - who’s dressed in her Vixens uniform - in the hallway.

“You’re really not coming?” she asks. “It’s Greendale.”

Betty doesn’t really care _ who  _ the Bulldogs are playing and she doubts Polly does either - not genuinely anyway. She hopes they win of course (it’s not like she wants to rain on the proverbial morale parade) but she won’t miss the game and the game won’t miss her. 

“I’m tired,” she answers. “But have fun.”

She remembers to go back to collect her razor from its place in her vanity drawer, and catches sight of Archie Andrews next door leaving for the game. Like Jason, he wears the number nine jersey too, and he looks up towards her window. He nods with less confidence than she’d expect from the captain of the football team, his lips turned into something of a smile before he puts his head back down and climbs into the passenger seat of a waiting car. 

Betty only realises as it drives off that she hasn’t waved back.

Downstairs, she can hear her mom lecturing Polly on responsible drinking and teenage pregnancy. She closes the bathroom door, turning the shower on as hard as it’ll go, and tries to forget everything other than Offred and Nick and their potentially dangerous affair.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The house is quiet as Betty sinks further against her pillows, her eyelids growing more heavy as she turns the page. Just as she reaches the end of the next sentence, there’s a strange noise at her window, almost like stones against the glass. She lifts her head to concentrate on the sound and when it comes again, she realises that it  _ is _ stones against the window.

Sliding out from under the covers, she pads across the carpet to the closed drapes. The last person she expects to see as she tentatively tugs them open, is Jughead Jones.

Immediately, she curses herself or being in pajamas with her hair pulled back into the bun she sleep in, and she folds her arms self-consciously across her chest.

“Jughead, what’re you doing here?” she asks in a stage-whisper.

“You’re not at the party,” he says. “So I came to get you.”

Her ears feel like they’re burning and she’s not sure if it’s the freezing air or the embarrassment. “I’m wearing pajamas.”

A smirk crosses his lips. “I can see that. Penguin print - nice.”

Now she’s  _ definitely _ embarrassed.

“So, you coming?”

She should say no.

(She doesn’t)

As soon as he realises she’s not going to, Jughead’s smirk grows. “Shall I come up and wait? Help you pick out something to wear?”

“No!” she answers a little too loudly. “No, I’ll… I won’t be long.”

Quickly, she drags the window shut - careful not to let it slam - and yanks open her closet doors, maybe like she’s afraid he might leave if she’s not fast enough; like it might be some terrible prank he’s playing for a little Friday night entertainment.

But, she thinks, he’d told her about the South Side party last weekend. Had  _ almost  _ kissed her (and the more she’s thought about it since it happened, the more she’s convinced she would’ve discovered what he tastes like had they not been interrupted)

It’s cold out, so she pulls on jeans and boots. She picks her nicest pair though - the black ones with the heel - and then decides on a blue camisole with tiny printed flowers. It’s the furthest away from pastel she can get, and it’s hidden under a thick sweater anyway to stave off the freezing air. Finally, she tugs her hair free from its ponytail prison and runs her fingers through it a few times. There’s a kink where the elastic has been, but there’s no time for the straightening iron. 

There’s no time for makeup either, and so she runs the pink pearl lip balm sitting on her dressing table over her lips quickly.

Downstairs, she knows her mom will be in the living room, waiting for Polly’s return under the pretence of watching tv. There’s no way she’ll manage to sneak out - not even if she uses the back door in the kitchen: she’ll still have to go via the staircase with its creaky betraying wood.

She supposes she might be able to climb out of Polly’s bedroom window onto the roof and jump from there. 

And then she remembers the ladder in the garage. It’s never locked - something that never would’ve been the case if they were still living in New York - and she opens her bedroom window again, heart in her ears and bile on her tongue when she doesn’t see Jughead standing where he’d been only minutes ago.

And then, from the shadows, he appears again in a cloud of cigarette smoke that Betty finds worrying attractive. She sees the end glow amber as he takes another drag, amused, she thinks - judging by the twitching of his lips. 

“My mom can’t know I’m gone,” she tells him. “There’s a ladder in the garage that you can put against my window.”

This time, his lips curve into a definite smile as he blows out his drag slowly, dropping what’s left of his smoke so that it’s snuffed out by the damp ground. She’ll have to remember to pick it up later, she thinks. 

Jughead finds the ladder easily and sets it against the white painted siding, climbing up so he’s face-to-face with her. “You should keep your doors  and windows locked. Anybody could climb up here.”

It sounds like a forewarning, and Betty’s stomach flips. “I’ll remember that.”

His lips twitch yet again, like maybe he’d been about to smile but stopped himself. “Let’s go Cooper.”

He waits at the foot of the ladder for her to slide the window almost all the way closed before descending. Like he’d done at the party, Jughead takes her hand in his and she feels her cheeks grow hot despite the cold as they sneak along the side of the house and down the steps to the street.

His bike is parked a little way down - just out of sight - and Betty wonders whether she might’ve heard it had she not been so lost in her book. 

There’s only one helmet which he hands to her. She’s nervous. Nervous about so many things, but there’s that dark wave of hair flopping forward from his beanie and a look in his eyes that makes him devastatingly attractive. The kind of attractive that’s intermingled with danger and darkness and a thrill she’s not prepared for at the thought wrapping her arms around his waist so she won’t fall from the motorcycle. 

“Don’t let go,” he tells her, and her stomach flops again.

Her tongue feels too heavy in her mouth to let her say,  _ I won’t. _

  
  
  
  
  


The party is in full swing when they arrive. There are red solo cups littering Trev Brown’s parents’ floor, and Betty steps over them as Jughead leads her towards the kitchen so she can fill one of her own. She pours in only the tiniest amount of vodka and drowns it with Diet Coke so she can barely taste the bitter edge when she swallows.

He doesn’t fill his cup with hard liquor like she expects, but with full fat Coke that he drinks slowly. 

“Should we go to the other room?” she asks.

Jughead shakes his head. “It’s quieter here.”

“You want to talk?”

His jaw muscle tenses like he’s biting his tongue. “Amongst other things.”

Betty feels her heart rate pick up. “Like what?”

Catching her off guard, he leans in so that his nose grazes her jaw, just below her ear. Her whole body erupts in goosebumps as he inhales so deeply she can  _ feel _ it. She only realises that her eyes have closed when he speaks again. “Wait and see.”

It turns out that the portion of time Jughead wants to spend talking about himself is less than minimal. The girl who’d been serving at the Whyte Wyrm - Toni Topaz, she’s discovered her name to be - enters the kitchen and pours herself a strong Jack Daniels and Coke, raising a single eyebrow at the two of them but saying nothing as she heads back out. When Betty asks about the man who’d fallen through the door into the hallway at last week’s party, he quickly changes the subject.

She suspects it might’ve been his dad.

“We should find somewhere to sit,” Jughead tells her, and she gets the distinct impression he means somewhere more private. She also gets the impression that it’s not so he can tell her more about himself, but so he can do something else with his mouth instead.

(At least, she kind of hopes so)

Eventually, he leads her outside and she finds that she’s relieved they haven’t gone upstairs. Still, her pulse feels as though it’s thudding in her neck and ears as her back bumps against the wall and Jughead plants his feet either side of hers.

It’s cold but her breaths are hot - his are too - and her lips part as he zeros in.

Betty’s not naive - she’d known he was going to kiss her. She didn’t know, however, that he was going to kiss her like  _ this. _ He’s overwhelming: his scent; his touch; his taste. She’s vaguely aware that her lips are moving but she’s not sure if it’s because her brain is working them or because Jughead’s lips are puppet masters in this dance. His teeth graze her plump flesh with its coat of pink pearl balm and she opens her mouth wider as his hands slide higher from her jaw. 

His fingertips sink into her skin, each press of them delicious in a way that makes her want them everywhere all at once. Her head bumps back against the brick - not hard, but enough that she feels a dull pain - but it’s swiftly overridden by the feel of his tongue against hers.

Betty has kissed two boys in her life. The first one was a dare at a birthday party after which she remembers scrunching her nose at the saliva left on her mouth. The second was more of an experiment on the weekend her parents told her they were moving to Riverdale. It was sweet and gentle - the kind of first kiss she’s seen in the movies and read about in books.

Now that she’s kissing Jughead (is being kissed  _ by  _ Jughead) she’s not sure how both acts can even be called by the same name. Betty hasn’t read books that’ve had kisses like  _ this.  _

_ Everywhere _ tingles: her fingers; her neck; her toes. It’s only when she feels him press his groin against her that she’s reminded of their surroundings. Somehow, she manages to detach her mouth from his, her lips feeling bee-stung when she brings a hand tentatively to touch them. Jughead’s eyes open slowly, and almost all of his blue irises have been swallowed by black.

He looks like a thunderstorm, she thinks - ominous and threatening, but darkly beautiful. 

“I…” she gasps on a half-stutter. “I think we should probably head home before my mom finds out I’m gone.”

Something flickers in his eyes. She wonders whether it might be disappointment, or something else. Just as quickly as it arrives though, it leaves again, replaced by a smirk and a single lifted eyebrow.

“We?”

“Oh…” she swallows. “I just thought… I didn’t mean…”

“Relax Cooper,” he laughs on a burst of air. “I’ll take you anywhere if you’re going to kiss like  _ that. _ ”

 


	3. Temptation

 

“Just admit it man,” Sweet Pea laughs as Jughead slides into his favoured booth at Pop’s. “You’re about to lose this bet. Your reign as the Prince is over.”

He doesn’t return with words, but extends his middle finger before picking up a menu idly. He already knows what he’s going to have: has done since he was six and his dad first brought him here for his birthday back when they celebrated.

“Bet you thought she’d make it pretty easy,” Fangs says with a satisfied grin. “Giftwrap her v card in a bow.”

Both Fangs and Sweet Pea laugh, but out of the corner of his eye Jughead sees Toni grind her teeth. She looks like she’s about to say something but then changes her mind.

“We didn’t put a time limit on it,” He says. “And I kissed her at that party Friday night.”

“Round of applause for Jones making it to first base,” Sweet Pea jokes. “Bet she writes about you in her diary.”

“Fuck you,” Jughead finally replies as he sets his menu down. “I’ll order at the counter.”

Their food is delivered as the rain-hail-snow mix covers the ground outside in a grey mush, and he stuffs a fry into his mouth, wondering for how much longer the winter will last. Spring and its promise of lighter nights, brighter mornings and frost-free windows seems a world away.

“How about you, T?” Fangs asks. “You found out whether Cheryl Blossom’s curtains match her drapes yet?”

Toni steals a fry from his plate and then throws it at him, smacking him square in the nose. “You’re an asshole. It’s no wonder girls don’t want to go out with you.”

“I’ll take that as a no,” he half-laughs, but nobody else joins in and Jughead enjoys a large bite of his burger without anybody else bringing up the subject of girls from the North Side. 

  
  
  
  
  


He sends Betty a message midweek. She replies almost instantly, the notification making his lips quirk upwards despite the fact that in response to his question regarding what she’s doing, her answer is, unsurprisingly,  _ studying. _ It’s accompanied with the sad face emoji and a kiss.

_ I could come over and you could study me? _ He sends, figuring he’s going to have to delete his message history in case one of his idiot friends finds them. 

There’s no reply for a few minutes, but then comes a blushing face.

“There a girl on the other end?” His dad asks, nodding towards the phone in Jughead’s hands. 

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“You ever thought about studying textbooks as hard as you study the opposite sex?”

“Like you did, you mean?”

FP clears his throat. “Yeah well, the only thing _ I _ left school with was a pregnant girlfriend and a busted lip from your grandfather. I like to think you can do a little better.”

He glances back down at his phone.  _ Maybe Betty Cooper  _ is  _ better than Gladys,  _ he thinks. “You heading to the Wyrm later?”

It’s a loaded question, and they both know what the answer is. His father doesn’t bother to voice it.

_ Let’s go somewhere on Friday,  _ he texts.  _ I’ll pick you up at eight. _

She messages back a half minute later.  _ I’ll look forward to it. _

_ Me too, _ he types, and then deletes each letter quickly so there’s nothing left. He sends the thumbs up emoji instead. 

  
  
  
  
  


He doesn’t tell Sweet Pea or Fangs or even Toni about meeting Betty on Friday night. It’s raining and he thinks briefly about taking his motorcycle, but then he looks out of the window at the old truck his dad used to drive back when he worked with Fred Andrews (the truck his dad  _ still  _ drives when those brown packages he delivers somewhere in Greendale turn up) and thinks about the fact that neither of them need to be particularly good at balancing if things go in the intended direction.

_ When _ things go in the intended direction.

His dad looks up from the tv. “Be safe,” he says, and Jughead nods. There’s a double meaning that they both understand but choose not to acknowledge. 

“You going out tonight?” 

FP shrugs the kind of shrug that means he’s already made up his mind despite the gesture. “Might head on over to the Wyrm for a while.”

Jughead swallows and thinks about suggesting he have a night off. In the end, he says nothing. 

There’s a crossing where the north and south sides of town meet. It’s flanked by lights and the hardware store at one side; the tow-truck and car repair shop at the other. As Jughead approaches, the light jumps from red to green and he steps a little harder on the gas. 

Elm Street has barely changed since he was a kid. Betty’s house - that perfect kind of white wood-clad home with shutters and trees and a driveway made of asphalt rather than tyre tracks in the grass - sits next to the Andrews’ place. He drives a little further down the street than he technically needs to - meaning they’re both going to get wet - but he figures if by the end of the night he’s won this bet, then damp clothes are only a slight inconvenience. 

The ladder waits in the garage - hung on pegs he guesses Betty’s dad has bought at the hardware store and hammered into the wall so the floor is uncluttered (Northsiders have a place for everything, he’s surmised over his sixteen years) It’s not heavy, but it’s awkward enough that the top few rungs get stuck on the branches of the tree close to her bedroom window and he has to wrestle it free before he can set it against the ledge. 

The window slides up as he does so, the tips of eight fingers visible from where Jughead is standing until they’re joined by blonde hair and then - eventually - Betty’s face. There’s a smile on her lips which is tinged with something like nerves or anxiousness or a combination of both. Her sweater is low-cut and he can see the round spill of her tits pushed upwards by the cups of her bra. 

“Hi,” she says in a breathy sort of way, and he climbs up the ladder. 

“Nice sweater.”

He watches as she tugs at it somewhat self-consciously, and it makes him feel like a bit of a dick. It’s too late to tell her he  _ did _ mean it - it’s a nice colour and, obviously, it shows more of her chest than he’s seen before. He keeps quiet.

“My mom’s downstairs.”

“Your sister covering?”

Betty nods. “Yeah.”

She drives a Mercedes and has hundred dollar bills in her purse; her parents don’t like her leaving the house unless she’s going to school or the library. Northsiders are a fucking contradiction if ever there was one.  

“You ready?”

“I think so.” She looks back down at her outfit. “Am I dressed okay for where we’re going?”

It’s not like they’ll be getting out of the truck until he pulls back up here at the end of the night so Jughead figures it really doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, but he tells her “What you’re wearing is fine,” anyway.

“Oh,” she says softly. Quietly. As though she’d been expecting something else.

Before he can realise what he’s saying, he hears himself adding, “You look nice Betty.”

He heads towards the window without looking at her reaction. 

  
  
  
  
  


The road leading north out of Riverdale reminds him of a snake - coiled and sneaky in the way that it slinks through the trees with merely a whisper. The pines themselves appear secretive too, huddled close like they’re guarding something, and briefly, Jughead wonders what Betty thinks of this landscape with its vast difference to New York City. He knows he should ask her, but it’ll turn into a conversation in which he’ll be forced to lie about how he grew up so as not to receive her pity.

He’s already decided that Betty Cooper seems like the kind of girl who’d bring home a stray dog if she found it wandering alone. Jughead is neither a stray, nor a dog, although he can’t help but make some unsavoury comparisons. 

“Is it much further?” she asks, her fingers toying with a loose thread on her glove. 

“Not far,” he says. “Why?”

“I just…” she trails off and picks some more at the thread. It makes a hole between her fourth and pinky fingers. He fixes his gaze back on the road. “It’s a little further than I thought we’d go,” she says finally. “That’s all.”

The road widens slightly and then forks. Jughead steers the truck to the left and the ground grows more muddy beneath the tyres. Outside, the rain continues to lash against the windscreen as the wipers do their best to guide it away from his vision so he can see. 

“I didn’t plan on it raining quite so hard,” he tells her.  _ Or, _ he thinks,  _ at all.  _ He hasn’t even brought the blanket he’d found in the trailer’s living room cabinet - it’s not like they can lay it on the bed of the truck or spread it over the ground - so it’s still where it’s probably been since Gladys left. 

“I don’t mind the rain,” Betty tells him. “It’s kind of cleansing, don’t you think?”

What _ he  _ thinks, is that it would take a biblical flood to cleanse  _ him. _ He answers only with a shrug and then says, “You seem like the kind of person who’d prefer the summer.”

It’s Betty’s turn to shrug, but she looks almost apologetic doing it - like maybe it’s an act.

“It rains in summer too,” she says, and then presses her palms against her thighs. 

He pulls the truck to a stop on the patch of land that’s supposed to be covered with gravel, but seems to have lost most of the stones over the winter period. Betty, he discovers as he turns in his seat to face her, is gnawing on her bottom lip so that there are tiny little indents from her teeth littering the skin. With his thumb, he gently tugs it free and then hears her breath catch. From the rise of her chest, Jughead can tell she’s nervous. It’s evidenced only seconds later when she questions,

“Are we here?”

Her tone is ambiguous. She doesn’t sound as impressed as he’d assumed she might be; as impressed as he knows  _ other  _ girls their age would be if he were to bring them here. 

“It’s a lookout point,” he tells her by way of an answer. 

Finally, Betty turns her body so she’s angled more towards him. His lips twitch but he fights the smile. “I guess with this weather, there’s not too much to see huh?”

He moves his hand across the stick shift so he can release her seatbelt. Then, he releases his own. 

He’s already leaning in towards her lips when he murmurs, “I can think of something.”

She tastes like strawberry cotton candy. Like the milkshakes at Pop’s. Like he imagines those lip balms he’s seen on Toni’s set of drawers to taste. 

Her lips are pillow-soft. Her hands are pressing gently at either side of his neck and he opens his mouth wider; slips his tongue past hers; strokes against it until her mouth opens wider too and he can graze her lip with his teeth.

She makes a noise that’s not quite a moan, but it’s something close. Something that means his mouth on hers feels good (which, in turn, should mean that  _ other _ parts of her body feel good) and Jughead presses harder. 

He can hear their breathing. It’s fast and hard - close to running out of air - and he thinks  _ take her jacket off.  _

His fingers find the buttons with ease - not his first rodeo - but he goes deliberately slowly, making sure to brush against her tits which are hidden beneath her cream sweater. He waits a little longer than he might usually to rid Betty of the jacket, and he thinks it might end up in some sort of pile on the floor of the truck near her feet. 

She breaks away to take in more air and his fingers start their expedition under the soft material of her sweater, just grazing at first until they reach the dip of her waist and she jerks against the passenger door. 

“Jughead,” she gasps - but not in the right way. “I don’t… I’m…”

He wipes at the corner of his mouth.

“Is this what you brought me here for?” Betty asks. 

“To make out?”

She swallows. “Your hands were under my shirt.”

_ Fuck,  _ he thinks. He’s gone too fast. This is going to be harder than he’d anticipated. “You didn’t like it?”

This time, she dips her head somewhat embarrassed. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” He chances the brush of his fingers along the underside of her wrist. She doesn’t pull away.

“Shouldn’t we get to know each other a little first? I mean… that’s what a date’s for, right?”

_ Maybe, _ he thinks,  _ but this isn’t a date. Not really. _ He slides his fingers a little higher along her arm. “What do you want to know?”

“When did you join the Serpents?”

He shrugs. “I guess I’ve always been a part of them. My dad’s the leader - it was inevitable.”

“Inevitable?” she questions. “You didn’t see any other path for yourself than the one your dad took?”

Something bitter rises in his throat and he swallows before it has chance to surface. “No.”

“I didn’t mean -”

“- You got any more questions?” Jughead cuts in. 

“Do you have any siblings?”

He thinks for a moment - maybe for too long - about Jellybean and her now empty bedroom; her favourite stuffed bear Gladys left behind; the picture his dad has of the two of them in his wallet.

“No.”

“What about your parents?” she asks. “What are they like?”

“They’re like everyone’s parents.”

“You don’t have to sneak out of the window though right?” Betty probes. “Nobody’s climbing into your bedroom via a ladder.”

Despite himself, he feels a brief hint of a smile crossing his lips. “Yours always been this strict?”

She hasn’t noticed his left hand on the warm skin of her hip (or if she has, she doesn’t say anything about it) “More so since Polly and Jason got together. My parents hated him even though I’m pretty sure he was a good guy.”

“So you’re a good judge of character?” Jughead asks. 

Betty’s eyes fall to his hand before lifting to meet his. “I hope so.”

  
  
  
  
  


He drops her off as the rain finally relents a little and all the lights in her house are turned out. His dick aches, disappointed that even though Betty had at one point been seated on his lap, her hands had never ventured as far south as his belt buckle or zipper. 

“We can’t,” she’d said when his hands had reached to pull her sweater over her head, thumbs sweeping over the thin material of her bra so that she’d gasped into his mouth. 

He’s not exactly well-versed in  _ we can’t, _ but he figures it hadn’t been the kind that might’ve been accompanied by an unvoiced  _ can we?  _ It was, he thinks, the kind that means either  _ not here  _ (or, worse,  _ I don’t want to _ )

The ladder is still there, waiting for her to climb back into the safety of her bedroom - away from the cold; from him - and yet she pauses at the bottom. 

“Text me when you get home?”

Jughead blinks, trying to hide his surprise. “Uh... yeah.” He clears his throat and she steps forward.

“I had a nice time.”

He nods. “Me too.” It’s not untrue, just it could’ve been  _ nicer. _ More eventful. 

With purpose, he closes the gap between them, half-pulling her to him so she collides against his chest and her mouth crashes against his, and he seals his lips to hers as a reminder. He can feel her body sag a little, her hands clutching at the lapels of his jacket and he’s forced to pull away when he feels that ache in his groin again.

She’s breathless and her eyes stay closed for a good few seconds after his have opened. 

“Night Cooper,” he says, and waits for her to climb up through the window. 

He stays by the foot of the ladder until she’s all the way inside - until he’s watched her ass disappear into the warmth of her room - and then he takes the ladder back to its home inside of the garage. 

His watch says 22:47. He doesn’t want to go back to the trailer yet, and doesn’t want to go to the Wyrm either. From the relative comfort of the truck, he sends Sweet Pea a text - one to Toni too, just in case - and pulls away from the curb as the rain grows steadier yet again.

By the time he’s reached the crossroads, he’s received no reply from either, and so pulls into the parking lot at Pop’s. There isn’t long left until close but if he’s lucky, there might be a few spare onion rings to go alongside his burger if nobody else joins him.

Perhaps surprisingly, he’s not the only customer. Trula Twyst - one of the girls in his literature class (the same girl he remembers kissing him behind the jungle gym in kindergarten) is nursing what’s left of a chocolate milkshake at the counter. 

“Jughead,” Pop greets. “Your usual?”

“Yeah - thanks.”

Pop nods and turns towards the kitchen but then looks back. “There’s a couple onion rings with your name on if you want them?”

This makes him smile. “I think you know the answer to that.”

The old man laughs and nods again. “Jughead Jones: Always hungry.”

Fleetingly, he thinks that someone should engrave that on his headstone when he dies. He takes a seat in front of the cash register and Trula turns her head. “Jones.”

He nods (they all do so much fucking  _ nodding _ )

“Wouldn’t have thought you’d be  _ here  _ on a Friday night.”

“Why’s that?” he asks. 

She shrugs. “I’ve heard stories.”

“Yeah?”

Pop returns and sets a cup in front of him to be filled with coffee. “How about you Trula?” he asks. “It’s on the house - would rather give it to you kids that pour what’s left of the pot down the drain.”

She turns to Jughead like she needs to consider something before giving her answer. With her arms folded like they are, he can see that her tits meet in the middle. Betty’s don’t. 

He doesn’t have an opinion on which is better, but he  _ does _ have an opinion regarding thinking about Betty Cooper on a Friday night after she’s essentially turned him down. 

_ It’s the bet, _ he reminds himself as Trula tells Pop she’ll stay just a few more minutes.  _ It’s just the bet. _

“You heard the rumours about Southside High?” she asks him, then scoffs. “Of course you haven’t - you’re only interested in sex and the Serpents right? In that order?”

Jughead grinds his teeth. He doesn’t know what rumours she’s referring to, but he’ll be damned if he gives her the satisfaction of being asked to tell him.

She tells him anyway. “Apparently, some rich businessman from the city bought the land and is turning it into condos.”

“Where would we go to school?” he asks, forgetting himself.

Trula shrugs. “Riverdale High I guess.”

Pop brings out his burger and fries, plus a handful more than the couple onion rings he’d offered earlier. “Thanks,” Jughead murmurs, already reaching for the burger. 

Trula is watching him, curious, and he lifts an eyebrow. “What?”

  
  
  
  


There are no lights on when they reach the trailer. It means his dad is at the Wyrm again, but Jughead has his hands too far under Trula’s shirt to care as much as he probably should. 

Her skin is warm. Her hands move quickly to his belt buckle once they’re inside, feet making muddy prints on the threadbare carpet. He bumps into the counter. 

“Where’s your room?” Trula asks as she wrenches her mouth away from his. He half-expects to taste strawberries, but he doesn’t. He can taste coffee and something more acidic. 

He turns his head and she sucks on his neck. 

“Down the hall,” Jughead says, and leads her there by the hand. He can’t have a mark for obvious reasons, and Trula makes no further attempt to kiss him.  

She takes off her clothes and he takes off his - thinking briefly that the dark purple material of her bra is so wildly different to the sneak peek of cream lace he’d seen on Betty - and something unsavoury rises in his mouth. 

He swallows and opens the drawer beside the bed, takes out a condom from the box, and rubs the pad of his thumb over Trula’s clit. She keens and breathes his name and somewhere on the floor, his phone vibrates in his jeans pocket.

He ignores it.

  
  
  
  
  


Cheryl Blossom throws an impromptu party at her house the following night. Jughead supposes that calling Thornhill a  _ house _ is incorrect: it’s a legitimate  _ mansion _ with turrets and iron gates and the kind of staircase that makes you think of horror movies.

Toni is invited. By default, he’s invited.

He invites Betty too.

He picks her up on his motorcycle with the first words out of his mouth foreign and strange on his tongue. “Sorry about last night.”

“It’s okay,” she says quietly, tugging at her camisole which stretches it tight over her bra. There’s a bow between the cups. “I was just worried something had happened to you,” Betty adds.

He can tell from her expression that she genuinely means it. “I’m fine.”

“I know,” she says. “Polly says I worry too much.”

_ You might be the first person to have ever worried about me, _ he thinks, but chooses not to say aloud. Telling her he was screwing Trula Twyst into the sagging mattress of his trailer bedroom doesn’t seem like the right thing to say either.

“So, you ready to go?” Jughead asks. 

“Yeah.”

“Front door or ladder?”

She tilts her head to the left. “What do you think?”

“Something to tell the grandkids right?” he finds himself saying, and wonders where the sudden bout of verbal diarrhea has come from. Betty doesn’t say anything in response, and he finds himself hoping she hasn’t heard.

She’s wearing a skirt without tights and as she climbs down the ladder, he can see a flash of her underwear. It’s too dark to determine the exact colour, but he’ll bet his life that it’s some shade of pastel.

He drives faster than he probably should, but each time he takes a corner, he can feel Betty’s arms tightening around his waist and it’s not completely terrible. She still smells like strawberries and he thinks momentarily about asking if she’s had a milkshake at Pop’s today. The roar of the engine is deafening though - will easily drown him out - and he decides against it.

They pull up outside Thornhill and as she climbs off the bike, he says, “I like your skirt.”

Despite the darkness Jughead can see the blush creeping across her cheeks as she ducks her head to whisper a quietly polite, “Thank you. It’s new.”

He takes her hand and she presses herself further into his side. For the purpose of the bet, he doesn’t pull away.

Inside, despite the number of people already here, the air is cold. There’s a fire lit in the living room (of course there is, because Cheryl Blossom is about as theatrical as they come) and the music is loud over the speakers. It looks the the party scene in every teen movie Jughead has studiously avoided watching and yet somehow knows anyway. 

“Let’s get a drink,” Betty says, and begins to tug him through the crowd. He spots her sister in the dining room talking with Chuck Clayton, and he wonders briefly what might happen if their parents discover that both of their good girl daughters aren’t in their respective bedrooms, but at the house where Cheryl’s father killed himself with a noose around his neck and maple syrup barrels stuffed full of drugs hiding in the barn. 

“Yeah,” he says absently, and brushes past Archie Andrews who appears to be leaving. 

Toni is already there and pouring herself something with less mixer than it should have if she were to make it correctly. “Jones,” she says with a teasing lilt, followed by, “And Betty.” 

“Toni, right?” Betty replies politely before adding, “I like your top.”

It is, essentially, just a black bra with some sheer material over the top, and Jughead wonders why exactly she’s bothered to make it look like anything other than what it is: a hopeful shout for Cheryl’s attention.

“Thank you,” she replies - genuinely, he thinks - and returns the compliment. 

Betty blushes and Toni offers to pour her some of what she’s having, and he has the feeling that tonight is different.

  
  
  
  
  


Someone starts up a game of Spin the Bottle. It’s a fucking ridiculous game - they’re not ten - and Jughead’s all ready to suggest they go outside for some air, but then Betty sits herself down on the couch with hers legs crossed at the ankles like she’s there for the duration, and he thinks maybe it’s worth staying.

Toni joins the circle and both she and Jughead eye each other: an unspoken  _ this is a weird fucking way to be out of our depth,  _ but nevertheless they get on with it.

The bottle lands first on Moose Mason. He gets to kiss Midge Klump but doesn’t look overly thrilled about it. Next, it’s Cheryl’s turn. Jughead sees her eyes sweep over Toni - sees his friend’s chest rise like her breath is caught high in her throat - but the bottle lands on Reggie Mantle whose tongue is leaving his mouth even before their lips have met. Polly gets Chuck, Josie McCoy also gets Reggie, who now resembles a Cheshire cat, and then finally, it’s his turn. 

The bottle lands on Betty. He tilts her chin towards him with his thumb pressed underneath, fingers part way around her throat, and he kisses her hard. Harder than he had last night. Hard enough that when he registers the whistles and jeers and pulls away, her fingers are brushing her lips as though he’s bruised them.

She looks up from under her lashes, cheeks painted bright pink, but her pupils are dilated and he knows she liked it. There’s a smile fighting its way onto his lips but he subdues it: reminds himself he’s kissed her before and he needs to get a long way beyond  _ kissing.  _

The game continues, somehow with the addition of shots: either kiss with tongues or down some tequila. 

The bottle’s contents decline rapidly.

Things escalate and Cheryl demands that they all play Seven Minutes in Heaven.  _ More like it, _ Jughead thinks, and chances a look at Betty who’s gnawing on her lip but also making a show of trying not to look at him. This time, he lets the smirk creep all the way up into his mouth.

Toni’s eyebrow raises like she knows what he’s thinking, and then she just shakes her head with a wry smile. 

First up are Josie and Reggie. Jughead can see that the jock is trying hard not to show his happiness at being the first chosen (and at being chosen alongside the lead singer of the Pussycats) but ultimately, he fails. 

There’s more alcohol and he can feel Betty’s body growing heavier as she leans against him. He figures he should try and get her to drink some water - or at least something without liquor in it - because the last thing he needs is her falling off the back of his bike when he takes her home later. 

“Where are you going?” she asks deliberately slowly - evidently trying not to slur and not quite succeeding as he rises to his feet. 

“Another drink,” he says on a half-lie. 

“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”

He returns no more than a couple minutes later to discover that Sweet Pea has joined the party (and, naturally, the game) in his absence. 

“Jones,” he nods as Jughead sits back down next to Betty, handing her the solo cup of Diet Coke. He hopes she won’t notice the lack of Jack Daniels in it.

“Thanks Juggie,” she says, and there’s a strange pulling in his chest that he decides to ignore. He hopes neither Toni nor Sweet Pea heard. When he chances a look up and away from the girl half in his lap, he finds that Toni is busy making eyes at Cheryl who’s licking her painted lips. Sweet Pea is surveying the room and grinning like the fucking monkey he is. 

Reggie and Josie return, the latter looking somewhat contrite, and Jughead finds he’s surprised that she’d even agreed to accompany such an asshole into the closet in the first place. He looks down at Betty as they rejoin the group, watches her take a sip of her drink, and then meets his best friend’s gaze. 

“Next up,” Cheryl drawls. “Is….” There’s a prolonged pause during which her eyes shine at being the sole focus of the room, and then Jughead watches as they land on Betty. “Betty Cooper,” she announces proudly. “And Jughead Jones.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Polly watching the two of them. He turns his head so she’s no longer visible. 

“Go ahead new girl,” Cheryl adds. “Show the _ Prince _ what you’ve got.”

To his surprise, Betty leads him by the hand, stumbling a little over her feet, and then they’re shut inside of the closet with its row of coats and numerous shelves. 

“I’ve never played this game before,” she admits in a whisper, but ultimately steps closer. 

“Seven minutes to do anything we want,” he tells her, lifting his forefinger to trace along the underside of her wrist. Her fingers twitch and curl inward and her chest rises. 

“Anything?”

“Betty,” he says, deliberately dropping his voice as far as it’ll go. “ _ Anything. _ ”

“What…” she clears her throat. “What do you want to do?”

Jughead brings his left hand to trace the seam of her camisole, beginning at her waist where it’s tucked into her skirt, and cruising higher until he reaches the outline of her bra; until he can feel the lace and silk. “I want to do everything.” He repeats his actions with his right hand, then slides both around her front, brushing across her breasts. Faintly, he can feel her nipples as his thumbs edge closer. “What do _ you _ want to do?” 

Her breathing grows more shallow and he can smell the alcohol on her breath. “I… I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” His hands travel slowly upwards, tracing her collarbone; the dip of her clavicle; the column of her neck. He runs his nose along the skin too - inhaling the scent of strawberries like she’s a summer field and he’s five years old again with sticky fingers and lips stained red. 

Lips only millimeters from her neck, he breathes out slowly, staccato vibrations of his following question bouncing off her skin and back against his mouth. “How about this?”

He laves her neck with his tongue before sucking and stepping closer, inching his knee between her thighs. 

They bump back against the shelves and Betty breathes heavily enough against his ear that it’s almost a moan, and so he nips lightly with his teeth. She  _ does _ moan at that, pressing herself further against his knee.

_ Okay, _ Jughead thinks. _ Hands. Skirt. _

The skin of her thighs is soft. Softer than he expects. Soft enough that he strokes his thumb over the area again. 

She gasps into his mouth.

Their positioning makes things a little awkward: Betty hasn’t lifted either of her legs to wrap around his waist so he has more room for his hand to move, and so he uses his palm to guide her where he wants her. He kisses her all the time - alternating between hard and soft and faster and slower with his tongue stroking against hers and her breaths snatched and ragged. 

Her panties are edged with lace but the overarching material is silk (or, at least, something  _ close _ to silk) He finds himself a little more intrigued about this girl. “Jug,” she gasps, eliminating the second syllable of his name as he moves his thumb over the slightly damp patch.

He moves his lips to her neck and rubs again with his thumb, then slides his fingers beneath the elastic of her underwear. 

As though her body is fighting against her mind, she jerks, both pushing her pussy towards his hand and twisting her hips away. His fingers swipe her opening, feeling the wetness on her folds and she moans - louder this time, like she’s forgotten they’re in a closet at a party where people will hear them.

He wonders if he can make her scream.

And then - _ then  _ \- he has an idea. 

“Jughead,” she gulps as her hand comes to his shoulders and he continues to work her to climax. “I… I…”

He thinks she’s probably close judging by the wetness coating the tips of his fingers, and so he slips one inside, curling towards her front wall. This time, Betty’s entire body contorts and her breaths stop. He crashes his lips against hers and then - just as he feels her grip on his shoulder tighten - he pulls away.

Her eyes are only half-open and she sags against the shelves, a look of confusion and disappointment on her face. 

“Seven minutes are up baby,” he says, and wipes his fingers on his jeans. Betty’s cheeks are flushed and her chest is heaving - the creamy spill of her tits stealing his attention momentarily - and Jughead feels mildly like this whole thing might’ve been a mistake.

Too late now though, he decides, to do anything about it. 

They leave the closet and rejoin the group, the music having changed to something with a baseline that Jughead can feel all the way through his veins, and Betty snatches at the cup on the table, sipping initially before downing the contents when she thinks nobody is watching.

Cheryl and Toni go off to the closet, Reggie slides his hand around Josie’s waist and Jughead feels a prickle up the back of his neck when Sweet Pea’s smirking gaze meets his.    

  
  
  
  
  


Navigating two drunken Cooper girls is no easy feat. Navigating a locked house with only a ladder, no key and a highly-amused Sweet Pea is even more difficult. Luckily for Jughead, his best friend’s late arrival at the party had meant that he hadn’t had to drive back to Elm Street with the worry that Betty might fall from his bike - he’d been able to lay her in the back of the truck instead. 

Polly, at least, is able to walk along the short stretch of sidewalk to the steps leading to her front door. Betty however is passed out in his arms, not quite snoring, but not far from it. 

Neither of the girls have a key. Despite the fact that their garage is unlocked, there is no spare hidden beneath either of the two plant pots framing the front door. 

“There’s a ladder in the garage,” Jughead tells his friend. “Betty’s window should be open a little.”

Sweet Pea shakes his head. “No way.”

“It’s not like she can climb up the ladder,” he argues in a whisper, lest they wake her parents. 

“Then ring the doorbell. We can be in the truck and out of here before their parents find them.”

“You think either of them are going to be off house arrest any time soon if they get caught?”

Sweet Pea shrugs. “Not our problem.”

“You’re being a dick.”

“And you’re not,” he replies with suspicion. “ _ Wait _ \- you _ like  _ her!”

“I’m trying to win the -” he stops himself when Polly’s head turns, lowering his voice in reply. “You know what I’m trying to do.”

“I say we just leave them.”

It’s freezing. Even if he has to somehow get both girls inside himself, he’s not that much of an ass that he’d leave them to freeze to death. Or worse.

There’s something of a silent stand-off, but finally, Sweet Pea relents. “Fine. If I get caught, I’m giving the sherif your name.”

Jughead scoffs. “Like that would work. Hurry up.”

He watches as his friend sets the ladder against Betty’s bedroom window, his arms feeling heavy as he glances at the girl sleeping against his chest. Maybe he should call the bet off. The whole thing’s becoming more trouble than it’s worth. He has, after all, gotten enough girls into bed that he can stand not to win this one.

Sweet Pea disappears through the window and Polly mumbles something about Jason being mad and Betty stirs, her eyelids flickering. They don’t open.

A half minute or so later, there’s a noise at the front door. The porch light doesn’t come on, and so Jughead figures it must be the plan coming to fruition. The door opens revealing a grinning Sweet Pea, who wraps an arm around Polly’s waist, free hand against his lips to remind her to be quiet, and he walks her up the stairs. 

Jughead carries Betty close behind, looking for the open door indicating her room once they reach the landing. He finds it without any real trouble, watches Polly disappear with Sweet Pea into what he supposes is  _ her  _ room, and hopes that his friend doesn’t do anything stupid.

Betty wakes as he’s laying her on the mattress, sheets folded back so he can tuck them around her later. She blinks in the relative darkness, hand reaching up to touch his face. He lets her for only a few seconds before he jerks away to slide off her shoes. 

“Can’t sleep in these,” he tells her quietly for something to say.

“You brought me home.”

“You’re drunk, Betty.”

“You’re not,” she tells him in a tone that indicates - he thinks - surprise. “I’ve never seen you drink.”

He swallows and releases the buckle on her other shoe. “Because I don’t.”

He frees her foot and sets the second shoe on the floor beside the other one. Again, she reaches out for him. “Everybody says you’re a bad boy, Jughead Jones,” she says on a slurred yawn. “But I know you’re good.”

His mouth tastes sour and when he rises from the bed, he sees her eyes are closed again. Quickly, he folds the sheets back across her body and moves the strand of hair that’s fallen across her lips away from her face. 

The door suddenly opens and he makes to hide, but sees it’s just Sweet Pea. “We should go.”

Jughead replies, looking one last time towards Betty who’s now sleeping again. “Yeah.”

Beside the truck, Sweet Pea lights up a cigarette, passing him one wordlessly as they look up at the Cooper house. Jughead takes a long drag, closing his eyes on the exhale, allowing the calm to take over his body. 

They smoke their way to the bands and then flick the butts onto the ground, stamping them out with the toes of their boots. Sweet Pea chuckles, a burst of smoke circling through the air from his open mouth. 

“What?” Jughead asks.

“You sure it’s just the bet?”

He slides into the passenger seat without replying directly. “Fuck you.” He looks back one last time, and in the window of the house next door, sees the face of Archie Andrews watching them. “Of course it’s just the bet.”

 


	4. Alliance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note to apologise for having not completed all of your comment replies yet. I’ll get to them - I promise! Life has been rather hectic and to top it off, my laptop broke last night.  
> I get that this story isn’t for some people due to the themes it includes, and that’s fine, but I won’t be responding to each negative comment individually because I can’t be bothered, if I’m honest.  
> If you’re still reading, then :D Hope you enjoy this chapter x

Betty wakes with a sore head and a hazy memory. She rolls slowly onto the left side of the bed, taking comfort in the undisturbed cotton pillowcase and the cooler sheet beneath her palm. Material bunches at her waist and she tries to twist to shift the waistband of her pajamas to its rightful position, and that’s when she realises she isn’t dressed in her usual sleep attire, but in the camisole and skirt she’d worn the previous evening.

To Cheryl Blossom’s party.

Where she’d made out with Jughead in the closet and then let him do…  _ more.  _

Everything hits her in a rush: how he’d felt when her hands had gripped his shoulders - the soft leather of his jacket giving way to hard muscle; the scent of his cologne mixed with cigarettes and something else she’s still not sure of; the way he’d looked at her as he’d leaned in and closed his lips around her neck; his hands sliding up her thigh; opening her legs wider; dipping his fingers below her panties.

(Almost) getting her off. 

She half-huffs at the frustrating reminder of “Seven minutes is up baby,” but then she replays the word  _ baby _ in her mind and can almost feel those words against her skin.

He’s unlike any of the boys she’d met in the city - and he wants to talk to  _ her.  _ For the past sixteen years, no boys have wanted to take her to parties; nobody has thrown stones at her window or climbed up to her room with a ladder or whisked her anywhere on a motorcycle. It’s dizzying. Addictive. She feels grown up.

She feels, she realises, like Polly. Like she’s finally taking what she wants without having to ask permission from anyone, and it’s exhilarating. 

There’s a knock on her door. “Come in,” Betty calls with a rasp in her voice that isn’t usually present, and Polly peers around the white wood, fingers clutching the edge of the door. “Hey Pol.”

“Hey yourself,” her sister smirks, crossing the room to join her beneath the sheets having closed the door in case of an eavesdropping Alice. “What happened last night with you and Jughead?”

She feels a blush creep up her cheeks. Is she really supposed to tell her sister the details of what they did in that closet? 

“We didn’t… uh… we didn’t have sex,” she replies, scratching at her arm in slight embarrassment at the topic of conversation. 

“I saw the look on his face when you two sat back down. And more importantly, I saw the look on  _ yours. _ ”

“It wasn’t…” she trails off, remembering to whisper. “We did other stuff, just not… not  _ that. _ ”

Her sister lifts an eyebrow. “And?”

“And what?”

“Was it good?”

“ _ Pol, _ ”

“I just want you to have a good time,” she says. “If that’s with Jughead, then great. If it’s with someone else, then that’s great too.” Her voice is quiet and she sniffs, not quite crying, but not far away.

“What is it?” Betty asks.

“Jason’s so far away and so busy with football and we were so  _ happy  _ before.”

“Oh Polly,” she sympathises, wrapping her arms around her sister in a hug. “I’m sorry we ended up here.”

“It’s okay,” she sniffs again. “It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine.”

Betty can’t argue with that - not really. The sneaking out; the falling grades; the unplanned pregnancy. It was  _ all  _ Polly. But then she thinks about how badly her sister must be hurting - forced to leave the boy she loves (forced too, to go through with the appointment their mom had scheduled at the clinic) and she feels guilty for not checking in more.

She wonders if the cheerleading and the parties help her forget, or if they’re just a mask for everyone else to wear so they see her as what they assume she must be.

“I like him,” she admits, changing the subject. “Just…” 

“What?”

“It seems a little too good to be true.”

“Betty!” she admonishes softly. “You can’t think that. Every guy should want to take you on a date - no matter what side of town they’re from.”

“You think it matters?” Betty asks. “That we’re so different?”

Her sister’s hand on her arm is soft, but her eyes are hard. Honest. “Not one bit.”

  
  
  
  
  


There’s an announcement over the loudspeaker halfway through homeroom the following day. She’s doodling a picture of a daisy on the corner of her notebook when there’s a piercing screech followed by a crackle, and then Principle Wetherbee’s voice.

“Commencing tomorrow, Southside High will no longer be in operation. As such, all students on the Riverdale side of the Riverdale-Greendale border will become students of our school.”

There’s something of an audible groan, but Betty feels her pulse spike. The speaker crackles again, and Principle Wetherbee continues,

“I trust that you will welcome our new students with respect and the Riverdale High spirit we all know and love.”

She slides her phone from her backpack to check any missed text messages. There are none.  _ Perhaps Jughead doesn’t know yet, _ she thinks, but then decides this can’t be feasible. Surely Southside High would tell their students before this school has. 

Betty types the message quickly, her fingers tapping at the screen as fast as she can.

_ Just heard that you’re transferring tomorrow.  _ She adds a series of kisses, then removes them before settling on one lone x at the end.

She checks intermittently throughout the day, and then as she’s boarding the bus back home, she feels the vibration of a received message through her jeans pocket.

_ Save me a seat? ;)  _ it says, and she gets stuck on that winky face for way longer than she knows she should. 

Her fingers hover over the screen while Polly talks about all of the rumours surrounding the Southside High students, none of the words registering until her sister asks, “Well?”

“Huh?”

“What do you think?”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I drifted off. What did you say?”

“The Valentines Dance committee. They need someone to step in; you’re the best person I know at organising. Why don’t you give it a shot?”

“Polly, they won’t want  _ me. _ ”

Her sister frowns. “Why not?”

“Because…” she’s not entirely sure, just assumes they won’t. Polly on the other hand….

“Well, I think you should volunteer. And imagine Jughead holding you as you slow dance around the gymnasium having made it look so beautiful. It would be so romantic, don’t you think?”

Briefly, Betty allows herself to picture the scenario: his hands; her waist; soft music; dim lighting; a corsage on her wrist; the promise of a ride home on his bike. “I don’t know,” she says absently. “Maybe.”

  
  
  
  
  


Later, after she’s eaten dinner of grilled chicken and plain vegetables, showered and tried to ignore her slightly rumbling stomach and dissatisfied tastebuds, tucked herself up under the sheets with her book and a hot mug of tea, Betty finds her mind wandering - to Jughead of course.

And to what they’d done in the closet on Saturday night. She knows she was drunk. Beyond drunk - maybe even  _ wasted. _ But it had helped numb the anxiety thrumming through her veins at how she was at another party she hadn’t  _ officially _ been invited to. (Had helped numb her nerves too, regarding the games)

It’s his lips she thinks of first: how they’d been slightly parted in readiness; how they’d guided his hot breaths over her skin so it both burned and erupted in goosebumps at the same time; how they’d sealed around hers, soft and welcoming - veritable pillows melding with hers. There’s an ache between her legs and slowly, her hand leaves the book and travels downward over the rise of her breasts; her nipples; each one of her ribs; her belly button, and then down past the waistband of her pajama pants. 

It’s quiet outside - that almost-eerie kind of still that belongs only in sinister neighbourhoods or the perfect kind where everyone’s tucked up in bed for the night. Betty isn’t entirely sure which of those Elm Street is, but it ceases to matter as she thinks of Jughead’s tongue licking hot, wet circles on her neck, the light scraping of his teeth coming next; his knee between her thighs, hard and rough as she’d pressed against it. His hands - big and rough and calloused - palming over her camisole, spanning more of her skin than she could’ve imagined, thumbs meeting at the bow of her bra before travelling down to her legs. 

Betty’s fingers - just the first two of her right hand - find her clit and she circles them as she recalls the way Jughead had rubbed her, gently at first and then with more speed, his mouth at her neck; her jaw; on her lips as he’d used those fingers of his to slip between her folds. 

She does the same, picking up her pace. Harder. Faster. Sinking beyond where she’s gone before until she can feel more wetness; more heat; more of everything. She arches her hips, half-expecting to feel the hard wooden shelves beneath her ass, but it’s just soft mattress: feather and down from Savoir, and she’s kind of disappointed. 

Her legs begin to feel heavy and she thinks again of the dull ache in the back of her thigh where Jughead’s hand had been holding her in place, fingertips sinking deep into her skin so she didn’t fall. Betty presses the heel of her palm against her clit and she flies over the edge, left hand falling from her book to grip the sheets; teeth biting her lip so hard she tastes blood; vision whiting out for a second or two until she remembers where she is.

Cheeks flushed, she pulls her hand out from her pajama pants and wipes her fingers on the material like Jughead had done, and even though she’s satisfied, she’s also  _ not.  _ There’s an ache between her legs she hasn’t felt before; an ache she somehow  _ just knows _ can be satisfied by him. 

The bedside lamp is still on and she flicks it off, cloaking the room in darkness. As she closes her eyes, she listens out for the sound of a motorcycle or stones against the glass or the click of a cigarette lighter.

None come.

  
  
  
  
  


Almost twenty minutes earlier than usual, Betty gets up to pick out her outfit for the day. Since starting Riverdale High after Christmas break, she’s worn nothing but jeans (except, of course, in gym class) but today she lingers over a tan corduroy skirt and a sweater that isn’t her usual pastel, but a dark grey. She tries it on and stands in front of the mirror for ten minutes, examining her appearance from every angle until chickening out and opting for the light blue cardigan with the fancy jewelled collar ( _ it makes your eyes look really sparkly, _ Polly had told her once) and a jean skirt she can still wear with tights and boots. She ties her hair in its trademark ponytail and then coats her eyelashes in mascara before heading downstairs for breakfast.

She’s nervous. Her mom’s eyes settle over her as she pushes the granola around her bowl and so Betty forces a final mouthful down before feigning the need to hurry.  

“I can’t believe the school board has allowed those  _ scoundrels  _ to join Riverdale High,” Alice says, sipping at her coffee almost violently. “You girls let me know if they disrupt your classes in any way.”

Polly simply raises an eyebrow in Betty’s direction and she feels her cheeks heat up. She leaves to brush her teeth and hears her mom mutter something about  _ this town supposedly being a safer place to raise children; less temptations.  _ Quickly, she shuts the bathroom door so she can’t hear any more.

She and Polly board the bus where the main topic of conversation on everybody’s lips is the impending arrival of Southside High students - namely the Serpents. 

“You nervous?” Polly asks her quietly.

“A little.”

“Have you thought any more about the Valentines Dance committee?”

“Not really.” Her mind’s been pretty much occupied by  _ other  _ things.

“Well I still think you’d be great,” she says. 

They arrive at school and there’s no sign of Jughead or the other Serpents, and Betty feels slightly calmer. She takes her seat in homeroom next to Ethel Muggs who’s always polite enough to say _ hey  _ when she sits down, and takes out her notepad so she can look over her notes for literature class while she has a moment.  

The bell rings and she makes her way along the hall to the room and that’s when she sees him. Betty has her seat close to the front of the classroom and knows the only spare is either diagonally in front over by the window, or right in front of the teacher’s desk. Neither of which are where he’s currently sitting. He’s perched on the desk she’s supposed to sit at, the chain from his jeans dangling over the side of the table, a knee hanging over each side.

The room fills up and everybody stares, but Jughead seems not to mind. In fact, he seems to enjoy it. Betty approaches him slowly, hand clutching at the strap of her backpack.

“That’s uh… that’s my seat,” she tells him, and watches a smirk spread across his face.

“I know: I asked around.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Right.”

“I wanted to figure out the best place to sit, based on your vantage point.”

“What -” Betty begins but is cut off by Ms Trewick, their literature teacher, who drops a pile of tattered books on her desk with a sigh.

“-I believe even Southside High had chairs Mr Jones,” she says. “You can sit in one of the spares.”

A few chuckles bubble up from the students and Betty watches Jughead look at Toni, open his mouth to say something in return, but ultimately close it again before making a show of sliding into the seat diagonally in front. 

She feels second hand embarrassment at the situation; feels her cheeks flush and her head dip automatically.

“Page one hundred and twenty-four,” Ms Trewick announces. “Antoinette, Forsythe, I have a copy for each of you here but I understand you were studying a different novel at your previous school.”

Betty blinks at the use of their full names but Ms Trewick isn’t finished. “Unfortunately, you’ll have some catching up to do. Who’s willing to help them out with an overview of what’s happened so far?”

  
  
  
  
  


By the beginning of lunch, Betty is beginning to suspect that Jughead is a little behind in his studies. By the end of the day, having had a total of three classes with him, she’s  _ certain  _ that he’s behind. She’s heading towards the line for the bus when he calls her name, the two beats accompanied by bursts of cigarette smoke. Polly nudges her forward and he takes another drag, exhaling in one long breath. 

“You know, you’re not supposed to smoke on campus.”

“No?”

“No,” she replies. “But I think you knew that.”

The corner of his mouth lifts into a smug smile. “We’re all allowed to be a little bad sometimes right? Like  _ you _ were on Saturday night.”

His voice is low and smug and Betty feels her skin flush from the tips of her toes all the way up to her forehead. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Polly almost at the doors. “I have to go.”

“Let me take you home.”

Her heart rate ramps up further. His eyes look dark and his lips are slightly parted and her mouth is watering. She  _ should  _ catch the bus. Go home. Study. 

But she doesn’t  _ want _ to do those things. “Okay.”

Jughead finishes his cigarette and stubs out the butt with the heel of his boot. There’s only one helmet which he hands to her, his fingers grazing her chin as he fastens it for her, tightening the strap so it fits. “There.”

She desperately wants to kiss him, have him kiss her -  _ anything _ \- but they’re not at a party or on a date and it’s not -     

His lips are on hers before she’s finished her train of thought.  _ Oh.  _

“Don’t pretend you haven’t been thinking about me since the closet Cooper,” he says smugly when he’s pulled away.

She’s a little dazed and there are people watching and she practically stumbles against him. His grin widens. “Thought so.”

He mounts the bike and Betty follows suit, wrapping her arms around his waist as loosely as she dares. He turns so he’s half facing her, a single eyebrow raised. “You weren’t so shy on Saturday night. Hold me tighter: you’ll fall.”

She does as he instructs, fighting the urge to lean forward towards him as he turns back and starts up the engine. They roar out of the parking lot and onto the street, and rather than take the left turn in the direction of her house, he carries straight on at the lights towards the South Side. Butterflies flutter in her stomach and she finds herself hoping that Polly will be able to cover when their mom gets home. 

They pull into the parking lot at Pop’s and Jughead kills the engine, the vibrations she’s gotten used to feeling beneath her legs suddenly ceasing. 

“You like milkshakes, right?” he asks. “Strawberry?”

Her ears feel hot. _ Is this a date? _ she wonders. “Yes - it’s my favourite.”

He seems to smile to himself as he answers, “Mine too.”

Strangely enough, he doesn’t order himself a strawberry one, but vanilla. Pop asks if he’d like his usual burger too, but he declines politely and they take a seat at one of the booths at the far end of the diner.

“Did you enjoy your first day at Riverdale High?” she asks.

He half scoffs, the air bursting from his nostrils loud enough to make a noise. “Not really, but I guess you could say there were some advantages.”

She dips her head at his comment but then feels his finger beneath her chin again. “You do that a lot.”

“Oh,” Betty says, her cheeks pinkening. “I guess I get embarrassed a lot.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you embarrassed at me implying you’re nice to look at?”

She shrugs once and feels her head bend again. Jughead holds his finger at her chin. “I guess nobody’s ever said that before.”

There’s a look that flashes across his face - albeit briefly - that she can’t identify. “Well,” he says very quietly. “I’m saying it now.”

Pop brings their milkshakes and she sips slowly, not wanting to be confronted with the awkward moment where she either has to get another or leave. “Thank you for taking me home after the party,” she says. “I don’t usually get drunk like that.”

Jughead takes a long sip from his straw. “Why did you?”

There’s a slight sting of pain and Betty realises her teeth have sunken through the skin on her lip. She releases it slowly. “Courage.”

She sees his fingers tighten around his glass so much that the ends of them turn white and wonders if she’s said something wrong. “To do what?”

She waits a second, and then another. And another. “Play Spin the Bottle. Go into that closet with you.”

“Did you want to?” he asks quickly. “Go into the closet I mean?”

Her voice is almost in audible when she admits, “Yes. But...”

“But what?”

_ I almost didn’t want you to stop. I fantasized about you the following evening. _ “Nothing.”

He opens his mouth like he’s about to say something else, but then promptly closes it again and there’s an awkward period of quiet where neither of them do anything but sip at their milkshakes. It’s interrupted, thankfully, by Pop who brings them a basket of chili cheese fries.

“Oh,” Betty says gently. “We didn’t order these.”

“On the house,” he says with a wink directly more towards Jughead, she thinks, and then a nod before he heads back to the counter. “That’s so sweet of him.”

“Yeah he’s…” Jughead pauses to stuff a couple of fries into his mouth, chewing and swallowing quickly. “He’s a good man.”

She doesn’t eat many of the fries. Her mom will notice if she’s struggling to eat dinner at home and she’s not brave enough to admit that she’s been at Pop’s with a boy from the other side of town. The  _ wrong  _ side of town. 

Jughead is doing a good job of demolishing the portion anyway, eating as though he hasn’t has food in the last twenty-four hours. 

“Can I ask you something?” Betty questions.

He pauses in his chewing. “Go ahead.”

“This bad boy reputation of yours - where does it come from?”

The muscles of his jaw twitch and it takes him a while to swallow. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks down at the table like he’s suddenly interested in pouring salt over what little of the food there is left. “My dad.”

“The leader of the Serpents?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you… I mean… have you done…”

There’s a noise that leaves his mouth, almost like a sigh. “Why do  _ you _ think I have this reputation?”

She thinks for a moment, unsure of whether to voice her opinion or not. “I think… maybe it’s because you _ want _ to have it.”

Jughead consumes the entirety of what’s left of his milkshake in one go and Betty wonders whether she might’ve said the wrong thing. “You’ve been pretty sweet to me,” she adds. “And uh… I noticed in math that you worked hard to get to the answer but…”  _ But it was all wrong, _ she thinks. “You cared.”

He shrugs, but the bobbing of his adam’s apple as he swallows heavily gives him away. 

“If you like,” Betty chances, “I can share my notes with you? Show you what we’ve learned so far?”

“You’ve only been there a few weeks longer than I have.”

_ But we started East of Eden right after Christmas, _ she wants to say. _ I’ve been there for all of it so far.  _ “I did some of it at my last school.”

“Why would you want to spend time sharing your notes with me? Haven’t you got cookies or cupcakes to bake?”

There’s something slightly bitter about his tone, and Betty blanches. She hadn’t meant to offend him. “I’m sorry -” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“- You must have better things to do - that’s what I meant.” He rubs at the back of his neck and Betty wants to tug his hand back towards her. 

“I’d enjoy it,” she replies. “Honestly.”

He lifts an eyebrow and something of a smirk is back. “Yeah? I can make it worth your while.”

A thrill jolts through her and she wonders if suggesting they get together tomorrow after dinner is too soon. She knows she’ll need to keep parts of it hidden from her mom: the fact that it’s a boy she’ll be semi-tutoring; the fact that he lives on the South Side; the fact that his father is the head of the Serpents. But tutoring looks good on college applications - she can use that in her favour - and if there’s anything Alice is certain about, it’s that she’s going to college. 

She folds her hands in front of her and catches sight of her watch. “I should be getting home.”

There are still a couple fries left in the basket and she watches him eye them, but he says, “Okay,” and makes to stand.

“I can walk from here - it’s not far.”

“No,” Jughead counters. “It’s getting pretty dark: I’ll drop you.”

Of course, him dropping her is not actually outside of her house, but at the top of the street so her parents won’t hear the roar of his engine. She hands him the helmet and he catches her arm as she turns towards the sidewalk. His lips are warm and soft despite the cold weather and she doesn’t want to pull away. When headlights spill over the street though, she does, blinking her eyes open slowly. 

“Night Betty,” he says in such a tone that it makes her heart leap into her throat.

“Night Jug.”

She knows he watches her walk along the street until it curves and he’ll no longer be able to see her. As she passes the street lamp between her house and the Andrews’ next door, she can hear him accelerate off back to the South Side, and she wonders if this is how Polly felt when Jason used to bring her home.

  
  
  


The following day, Betty has only one class with Jughead. At lunch, he sits with the other Serpents, their jackets on prominent display, but she catches him looking over at her more times than she can count on one hand, and she finds herself smiling into her salad.

When the final bell rings, she heads home on the bus and reads the texts from Polly - who’s home sick with a bad cold - congratulating her on joining the dance committee.

_ I knew they’d want you, _ she’s sent.  _ Well done baby sister.  _

She eats dinner with her mom and dad with Polly in bed upstairs, and then helps clear the dishes before heading to her room to brush her hair and run a coat of lip balm across her mouth. 

She takes the keys to the Mercedes, her arms full of study notes, and Alice reminds her, “Be back by nine.”

It’ll leave her only with around an hour and a half to spend tutoring Jughead, but she figures it’s better than nothing. 

At the trailer park, she crawls along the track relatively slowly, looking for the trailer Jughead had told her - in a voice that seemed to betray a little reluctance - that he lives in. She finds it without too much trouble, rolling to a stop not on the grass, but on the side of the track so the tyres won’t churn up the mud. 

It’s dark. There are a handful of street lamps with a weak offering of light, but they do little to illuminate the potholes and trailer numbers. She wonders what it’s like to live here all the time: to look out and see only other white oblongs dotted about amongst the grey. 

The few steps to the door are rickety and losing a battle with the weather, and Betty knocks as loud as she dares. It’s not long before the door opens and she sees Jughead wearing his beanie and a sweater - no jacket for once - and looking with a little trepidation at the notes in her arms. 

“Hey, uh, come in.”

She goes to take off her shoes but he stops her. “The carpet’s not… uh… and your feet will get cold.”

It’s small. From the doorway she can see a single couch and coffee table, a tv, a tall cabinet made from dark wood to the right, and then kitchen units painted in pale green to the left. Ahead is a tiny square from which three doors lead: the bedrooms and bathroom, she figures.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Tea would be great,” she replies and then watches his brow crease into a frown. 

“Sorry, we don’t have any. I can make coffee, or -”

“- Coffee’s fine,” Betty says. “Thanks.”

She takes off her coat and hangs it over the back of a chair, but the air is cold and she wonders if it would be too impolite to put it back on. On the counter, she spots an empty bottle of whiskey and when Jughead opens the refrigerator door to take out some milk, she hears the distinct sound of rattling glass. She watches as he spoons two large heaps of sugar into his mug, leaving it without milk, and then he offers the spoon to her.

“No thank you,” she replies. “Just a little milk so I won’t find it hard to sleep.”

His lips twitch as though he might smile, but they never quite reach the right position. 

“So,” he says, leaning against the counter. 

Betty cradles her mug with both hands. “So. Should we get started? I thought… uh, maybe… maybe we could start with English. We have that class tomorrow.”

He nods and they head to the couch.

She tells him first about the setting of the Salinas Valley for the majority of the story. “It’s the most wonderful depiction and the author talks about it with so much honesty,” she says. “If you get chance, it’s the one thing I’d recommend you’d read.”

Jughead nods but doesn’t really say anything, and so she continues. “Then we’re introduced to the characters.”

She tells him all about Samuel Hamilton and his wife, Liza; Adam Trask whose life is told through a detailed flashback of life on a farm in Connecticut with his half-brother and a father who may or may not have come about his money illegally; Cathy Ames who is the evil protagonist for setting fire to her family’s home and killing her parents.

“She’s pretty much a hate figure,” Betty says.

“For killing her parents?”

“I think, further in the story, she does a lot more than that.”

Jughead nods and looks back down at the paper spread across the coffee table. “You have a lot of notes.”

“I enjoy taking them.”

“Why?”

She blinks in confusion. “Because I enjoy analysing the story, the characters, what the writer was thinking when he made these people the way they are.”

“We were studying Lord of the Flies at Southside. It wasn’t quite as intense.”

“The book?” Betty asks. “Or the school.”

“The book. The classes.”

She nods. “Maybe we should stop there. That’s quite a lot to take in after a day of lessons.”

“Yeah.”

She looks up to find him watching her intently, and the air shifts. His lips are parted slightly and his breath leaves his body through them rather than his nose. His chest rises and falls and her eyes feel like magnets; like they’re stuck on whatever part of his body is closest. His fingers twitch and they steal her attention - just momentarily - before he says, roughly,

“Betty.”

She barely puts down her pen before he’s leaning over her and her legs are wrapping around his waist like they’ve always known what to do. His hands are framing her face and she feels both hot and cold all over, goosebumps travelling along her arms; her neck; up her legs and stomach and she slips her tongue beyond his, a soft groan falling from his mouth. It vibrates through hers too and she feels it in her toes as he presses against her, dragging his lips away from hers to her jaw and then her neck and the part of her collarbone that’s visible. 

His hands move too, sliding along her side under they’re at the hem of her sweater and then underneath it. Her stomach flips and her hips automatically rise and she’s suddenly so mad at herself for not chasing something like this sooner. For believing everything her parents told her about boys back in New York; for not doing what Polly did and finding it out for herself anyway. 

Her mouth makes a noise she doesn’t intend it to and then Jughead’s fingers are at her zipper, pulling it down. Suddenly, she’s very aware that they’re on the couch and his parents could walk in at any moment.

“Are your mom and dad at work?” she asks, surprised at just how breathless she is.

“Dad’s… yeah. My mom doesn’t live here.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Sorry.”

He shrugs. “S’Okay.”

She watches him for a moment and he seems to be watching her too. “We can go to my room?”

She wants to - wants to feel what it’s like without clothes, and it seems her body _ really  _ wants to find out too - but it’s nearing nine and the last thing she wants is her mom to suspect anything; for this to end. “I should really be getting home.”

“Oh,” he says, evidently disappointed. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” (she’s sure she should be getting home. She’s  _ not _ sure she wants to leave) 

Jughead nods and then proceeds to gather the notes into a neat pile, keeping his head down. He walks her to the door despite it being only a few feet away, and then watches her shiver as she slips on her coat.

“You’re cold?” he asks.

“Just a little.”

“I’m sorry it’s… the heater’s broken.”

She’s not quite sure how to respond and so she just nods once and fastens her coat. She turns as she opens the door and he catches her lips with his. “Thank you, I guess. For the notes.”

She smiles. “Don’t worry about it.”

He waits until she’s inside of her car before closing the door, and she drives home thinking about the cold air inside of the trailer and the threadbare carpet and that empty whiskey bottle on the counter. Her chest feels a little strange and she tries to remember only their kiss.

  
  
  
  
  


Betty pulls onto the driveway with ten minutes to spare. She hears the rhythmic pounding of footsteps on the sidewalk and turns to see Archie Andrews running towards her with his earphones secured to his ears. He slows to a stop upon seeing her and takes one bud out, wiping his hand across his brow to catch the sweat. 

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Betty replies. It’s a little awkward and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. 

“I uh,” he says with something of a sigh. “I know we haven’t really talked before.” It’s true: this is the first time they’ve really spoken - or certainly the first time he’s ever stopped to speak to her. “But uh… I noticed Jughead and Sweet Pea outside your house this weekend.”

“They brought Polly and me home from Cheryl’s party.” Her voice is low but she lowers it further. “Our parents don’t know we went.”

He nods. “Got it. Just…” He seems almost not to want to continue, scratching at the back of his neck in the same way Jughead had at Pop’s. “Just be careful there, okay?”

She’s half-stunned, but somehow manages to reply. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He jogs towards his house and Betty slips inside of the front door, greeting her mom with an overly-cheery  _ hi mom _ before heading upstairs. 

She showers and brushes her teeth and lies in bed thinking about Jughead’s trailer and Jughead’s kisses and just what Archie Andrews might have meant by  _ be careful there. _


	5. Climax

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all of your lovely comments last chapter. I promise I'm still working on the replies x

Jughead sighs and looks again at the clock on the microwave. Betty Cooper, in the past week she’s been sharing her notes with him (and in turn, he with her - though of a rather  _ different  _ kind) has never once been a minute later than she’d said she’d be. She leaves the trailer each evening at eight-forty in order to get home before her curfew (which, at nine pm, is ridiculously fucking early) and so that means they never get longer than an hour and a half.

That - in turn - means he never gets longer than thirty minutes of working his way up to sleeping with her. 

Tonight, she’s already fifteen minutes past her stated arrival time, and he contemplates calling her to check…. well, that she’s still coming, he supposes. That she’s okay. 

The snow has returned with a vengeance and he doubts that car of her parents is much good at navigating the icy track that winds through Sunnyside. He eyes the hot water bottle currently residing on the couch - his dad still hasn’t got the heater fixed and he figures it’s not fair if she’s cold while walking him through all the trigonometry he wasn’t taught at Southside High (and also, she might be more inclined to remove her clothes in his freezing bedroom if she’s not already cold to begin with) Jughead is in the middle of debating whether to pour the contents out and start again so it’s extra warm when the headlights of an approaching car wash over the couch. They’re followed by the quiet engine that stops on command without the usual accompanying splutter he’s used to, and then sound of a door closing before the telltale soft crunch of footsteps in the snow. 

He opens the door just as Betty is raising her hand to knock, and she smiles wide when she sees him - like she’s actually excited to be in this shithole of a trailer in this shithole of a neighbourhood. 

“Hey Juggie,” she says, and there’s an alarming twist in his chest at the same nickname Jellybean used to use. She’s used it once before but for some reason he doesn’t want to explore, it hurts this time.

“Cooper,” he says flatly in response, and closes the door quickly behind her so as to keep out as much of the cold air as possible.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she apologises, setting down her notebook and what looks to be a tupperware box. “I didn’t budget enough time for the cookies.”

He lets her continue, watching as she removes her coat and scarf and gloves, then her hat, until finally she’s standing there in just jeans, her boots and a lilac sweater. 

“You like chocolate chip, right?” she asks.

“Chocolate chip?”

“The cookies. They’re chocolate chip - I made them for you. Well… I guess I was baking them and I made a few extra that I thought you might like.” She clasps her hands together like she’s nervous. “And then I brought them over.”

He blinks, vaguely aware that he hasn’t said anything that implies he’s grateful. Nobody’s made him cookies before. He isn’t sure that anyone’s even  _ bought  _ him cookies before, unless he counts the Oreos Gladys bought occasionally on the days she didn’t seem to hate him quite so much. 

“Thanks,” he says finally, peeling back the lid to appraise the contents. The smell that hits him is the same kind you get in a bakery and his mouth waters. Jughead takes one - they’re still a little warm to the touch - and stuffs half into his mouth, a few crumbs sprinkling to the floor as he chews. He’s aware of Betty watching him with something like hope in her eyes and so he says, 

“Best cookies I ever had.”

She beams and he finds he’s smiling too as he devours the second half. “They’re not even my best work. You should try my vanilla cupcakes. You  _ could _ have tried my vanilla cupcakes,” she reminds him with a hint of chiding. “You would’ve liked the frosting.” 

He wonders if she’s flirting, or if she hasn’t realised the double meaning. If it were Ginger Lopez or even Cheryl Blossom, he wouldn’t question it. For some reason, he decides not to pick her up on her choice of phrase. 

“Maybe you’ll make some for me?” he finds himself saying on the half-chance that she  _ will  _ actually bake said cupcakes and bring him some in a tupperware box not unlike the one now sitting on his counter.  

She inches a little closer and he doesn’t miss the way she’s looking at his lips. “Maybe.”

Jughead closes the gap like he knows she wants him to, cupping her cheek with his palm. He knows she likes that - can feel her face turn against his skin - and so he strokes downwards with him thumb too as Betty pushes herself up onto her tiptoes to wind her arms around his neck. She presses herself closer still and so with his other hand, Jughead pulls her against him so she can feel the outline of his dick in his jeans. 

She gasps against his mouth and then -  _ then _ \- she lifts her left leg. He takes hold of the back of her thigh and she half-jumps so he’s carrying her; so her legs are wrapped around his waist and there’s no air between their faces as he sets her on the kitchen counter a little more roughly than he’d intended to.

Betty frames his face with her hands and he runs his beneath her sweater. Her skin is warm and he skirts his fingertips up to the dip of her waist.

“Jughead,” she says in such a way that he has no idea what she means. His lips pause in their duel with hers and he pulls back slightly to try and figure it out. She strokes her hand down his face and watches him with her teeth trapped between her bottom lip and, abruptly, he thinks,  _ I can’t fuck you here. _

“Bedroom,” he says, the word muffled at her lips as he kisses her once more.

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead sets her down in the centre of the mattress, his duvet straight and tucked neatly at the bottom (it’s always tucked neatly now - for this precise event) and she winds her legs back around his centre. He can feel his dick hardening; the space in his jeans reducing. He slides a hand beneath her sweater. 

Betty gasps for her breaths between kisses, her lips pressing harder against his - so hard that her teeth are starting to bite down a little on his flesh and it hurts but it also  _ doesn’t  _ hurt and he wants her to keep doing it but he can’t tell her that without pulling his mouth away.

His fingers find the button of her jeans and free it slowly. He grazes the sliver of skin with his fingertips and she pulls her stomach in, drawing it upwards. The jeans are tight and it takes both of his hands to slide them down her legs. When he pulls them off at the bottom, he notes (silently) that her socks have little cupcakes and what he thinks might be unicorns on them. He thinks about his own pizza socks in the laundry hamper and wonders if he should wear them next time.

Jughead tugs the socks off and then kisses the inside of her thigh. It makes her tremble and a soft half-moan leaves her mouth. Her panties are lilac like her sweater and he wonders if it’s on purpose. 

He kisses her again - sucking at her neck and her collarbone until her hands are on his belt and his attention is summoned in order to help her get his jeans off to join hers somewhere on the floor. He’s at half mast, his boxers beginning to tent a little and Betty swallows as she stares, visibly nervous, though trying not to show it. 

“Do… do you want me to touch it?” she asks, and maybe it should be funny but it isn’t and he just says,

“Later.”

What he  _ wants _ is to take her sweater off. 

He pulls the soft material upward and Betty arches her back to help him. He tosses it to the side once he’s freed her head and then he looks at her. She’s biting her lip and her skin is creamy-white and that’s when he notices the goosebumps.

There are goosebumps on her skin. 

He fights a grin because damn, he’s had positive reviews about his skills but he’s never elicited _ goosebumps  _ before. He skims his hand along the bare expanse, starting at the bottom of her stomach and smoothing upwards over her ribcage, and then her teeth chatter. She shivers and tries to hide it and all he can think is _ fuck that damn heater. _

The goosebumps aren’t from excitement. 

“Betty,” he says, pulling away to reach the ratty blanket that sits at the end of his bed. He’s had it since he was small: a gift from Toni’s grandmother before she passed away. “You’re cold.” He hands it to her and she shivers again, looking almost guilty when she wraps it around herself.

“Thanks.”

Unsure quite of what to say, he nods. There’s an awkward moment of silence which Jughead is about to quell with a suggestion that she use the hot water bottle he’s made (he can brew coffee too, he decides, and they could share the cookies and do this again in a few days’ time when the heater is working again) but then it’s ended anyway by the trailer door slamming closed.

_ Shit,  _ he thinks. His dad is home.

Betty must hear too because she stiffens, clutching the blankets even tighter around herself. “Is that your dad?”

He pulls away reluctantly. “Yeah.”

“Jug!?” FP shouts, voice booming in the way it does when he’s had a drink or two (or five or six) 

He decides to not answer but then his name is repeated again, and so he shouts back, “Two minutes.”

Betty blanches and he finds her clothes from the floor; finds his own jeans too, and they quickly redress in silence. 

_ I’m sorry, _ he wants to say. 

He keeps his mouth closed.

Plenty of girls have walked past his dad before. Sometimes at 3am, sometimes as the sun was rising early in the summer and he’d only just been coming home from the Wyrm. Most of those girls have been from the South Side - a couple, too, from Greendale - but this feels different. He doesn’t want Betty to have to pass his swaying father who’ll no doubt smell of stale alcohol; doesn’t want her either to have to keep her eyes fixed on the ground as she picks up her bag and her car keys.

He knows he’s the one who should be embarrassed, not her. And he is, obviously. 

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” she says quietly.

Jughead doesn’t want to agree, but she’s right. “Yeah.”

“I uh… can still go through trig with you - if you want?”

“I think you should probably just go,” he says. 

For a moment, Betty looks disappointed - almost like she’d been expecting to stay, maybe to meet his dad or something else equally as redundant. And then she straightens, smoothing down some non-existent creases in her jeans. “Yeah, I… yeah.”

He heads out first, that stupid square patch of  _ hallway _ tired and worn away from constant treading with heavy boots, and Betty follows close behind, her hands hidden beneath the cuffs of her sweater.

“Hi, Mr Jones.” 

FP looks her up and down like one of those dirty old men in movies that sit at the bar and call all girls _ honey,  _ and then says,

“You from the North Side?”

“Uh,” she starts, clearing her throat. “I’m from New York City originally.”

“You _ live _ on the North Side? Course you do,” he answers anyway. “That’s a fancy-ass car parked out there.” 

Jughead watches her head dip and he says under his breath, “Sorry.”

The smile she gives him actually hurts: it’s apologetic and full of pity and he wants to say  _ I’ve made my peace with it - this is what I am, _ but of course, he doesn’t.

“See you tomorrow,” she tells him softly and he nods.

He closes the door behind her and hears the crunch of her footsteps in the snow. He wonders briefly if it’s still coming down, but then his dad is talking and he misses the engine’s start-up.

“Thought I told you before about Northsiders. Ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

He purses his lips. “I don’t think the girl tutoring me in trigonometry is going to start any fights in your bar.”

“That’s what you were doing in there? Being tutored?”

He shrugs. 

“South Side Serpents are to North Siders what gum is to a shoe. I don’t want you around that.”

Jughead scoffs. “You know I go to school there right? On the North Side?”

“They teach you any art? I want your head in the game: Sweet Pea’s been running that damn parlour with Fangs for the past few weeks. You know I’d rather have my boy at the helm.”

He opens the refrigerator door and the bottles rattle as they always do. He pops the cap before he’s even closed it again, tipping the liquid into his mouth.

“You didn’t have enough at the Wyrm?”

His dad ignores the question and sinks onto the couch. Jughead grabs the tupperware box of cookies from the kitchen and takes them back to his room, closing the door behind him.

  
  
  
  
  


It snows again overnight. By the time he wakes in the morning, breath visible in bursts from the only part of his body peeking out from the covers, the ground is thick with it - all evidence of Betty’s visit the previous evening wiped away. Somewhat miraculously, his dad is up when Jughead hauls himself out of bed towards the shower. 

“Mornin’,” he greets gruffly, pouring water through the coffee machine. Jughead nods in response and heads into the bathroom.

By the time he’s showered and dressed, fingers and toes not quite so cold, there’s a mug of the black stuff waiting for him on the table. He gulps it quickly, not bothering to sit, and leaves the empty mug in the sink. 

“You gonna have anything to eat?” FP asks.

“Why? Did you go grocery shopping this morning?”

His dad swallows and sets his own mug down on the table. 

“I’ll get something at school,” Jughead says, and pulls on his jacket as he’s heading out of the door into the biting air.

At school, Toni is waiting with a takeout coffee cup for him. He wants to laugh: Southside High never would’ve served their coffee in cardboard, let alone the recycled environmentally-friendly stuff this place uses. 

“They have bagels this morning,” she says, and they head to the cafeteria to buy one each. 

He sees Betty in literature class which he’s fractionally late for, still with a mouthful of bagel as he sits down. She smiles at him and it’s not quite the same one she’d given last night as she’d left, but it’s not far from it. He flexes his fingers and then curls them back in towards his palm, making a fist. 

The teacher begins her discussion of parallels between the book and the Bible, and Jughead finds his mind wandering from East of Eden to lilac lingerie. 

  
  
  
  
  


The parking lot is busy at the end of the day. He spots Toni, blowing into her fingers and waiting by the truck for a ride home. 

“No Cheryl Blossom?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at her presence as he reaches the beat-up driver door. 

“Vixens practice.”

He smirks. “Right.”

At the line for the bus, he spots Betty standing beside Archie, the two of them laughing at something he can’t hear. Something twists inside of his chest and he wrenches open the door, ignoring its groaning protest as Toni does the same. 

She nudges him gently, tilting her chin in Betty’s direction. “You can still call the bet off, you know, if you like her.”

“Who said I liked her?”

Toni shrugs. “All I’m saying is you don’t have to be a dick for Sweet Pea and Fangs’ benefit.”

Jughead decides not to say anything in return, and lights up a smoke. It’s the penultimate one and, as he so often does when he reaches this stage of a pack, he thinks about giving up. (But then, inevitably, his temper will rise and his fingers will twitch and he’ll buy a pack from Tall Boy at the Wyrm)

“If I wanted lung cancer, I’d smoke one of these myself,” she says, tugging the Marlboro from his lips. She stubs it out against the window and then hands it back to him. “You can finish it later.”

Betty happens to glance back, meeting his gaze, and waves in his direction - just a small twitch of her hand backwards and forwards. He looks away.

They drive not to Sunnyside, but to Pop’s for hot coffee and chili fries with extra cheese. The lot is pretty empty save for a couple cars parked in the centre where the majority of the snow has been shovelled to the side. Jughead parks the tuck alongside a blue Ford and they head inside to the welcoming warmth.

“Goodness, you’ll catch your death of cold in those clothes,” Pop gasps quickly, taking in Toni’s bare midriff and ungloved hands.

She just shakes her head and they order without looking at any menus before taking a seat in the booth farthest from the door.

Midway through the scarfing of his portion of chili fries (with  _ extra _ extra cheese no less) the doorbell chimes and Jughead looks up to see Betty with a girl he recognises as Ethel someone or other. She spots him and her eyes shine in conjunction with her smile. He wonders whether his have done the same.

He hopes they haven’t.

From the corner of his vision he can see the two girls take a seat across the room, again as far away from the door as possible. There are likely to be more customers soon: the bus has obviously begun dropping students off on the North Side, and he shoves in another mouthful. 

They stay longer than most people. Jughead loses count of the amount of times Pop refills their coffee cups; forgets how many times the bell has chimed and cold sweeps of air have cut into the diner; forgets too, how many letterman jackets have come and gone.

Betty is still here, seated opposite Ethel despite her milkshake glass long being empty. She’s playing with the straw between her fingers, rolling it the way he does his cigarettes before he lights them, and then she rises, smoothing down her sweater (it’s pale blue today) which, again, isn’t creased.

“Hey,” she says.

Toni offers a smile but excuses herself to the bathroom. 

“Don’t come over tonight,” he says quickly.

“Oh, I...Okay,” she replies, clearly disappointed.

“I’ve got some other stuff to do - for the Wyrm Hole.” he clears his throat. “Designs.”

Her fingers fidget with her cuff. “Is it because I was talking to Archie earlier? He’s just my neighbour.”

“I’m not jealous of Archie Andrews,” he replies in a way that makes it sound like just the opposite. His fingers itch for a cigarette. He’s  _ not  _ jealous of Archie, but he _ is  _ wary.

“Okay.”

He watches her carefully, sees the blush creep high up her cheeks. 

“I mean good. Good. You shouldn’t be jealous of him.”

“I’m not jealous of  _ anybody. _ ”

Her lips twitch, but it’s not a smile that they form. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He watches her return to Ethel to collect her coat, and then they both leave. Briefly, Betty glances back at him, her ponytail bouncing around her shoulders. He nods and she turns her head and Pop brings him more coffee.

  
  
  
  
  


By seven pm Jughead has eaten all of the cookies Betty brought over the previous evening. By eight he can think only of her dressed in lilac lingerie and lying not on his sheets, but on the inevitable pastel of her own. His dad leaves for the Wyrm at a quarter past nine, and Jughead showers without being interrupted by a fist on the door reminding him that water bills aren’t cheap. 

He dresses and tugs his beanie on over the damp waves of dark hair tumbling forward, and then before he can think too much about it, slings his jacket over his back and heads out to his motorcycle.

He has to push it off their lot: the snow is too deep to ride through, but it’s been cleared on the main road through the trailer park and so he kick-starts the engine, revving a couple times until his fingers have warmed up enough to grip properly.  

When he reaches Elm Street, all of the downstairs lights in the Cooper house are off. There’s one on at the front left (Polly’s, he guesses - based on the little tour he and Sweet Pea took) and one at the front right (Betty’s) The garage is open as it always is, and he takes the ladder from its usual position, setting it against her window ledge.

He climbs quickly, rapping his fingers against the glass loud enough that she’ll hear, but not too loud to alert suspicion from her next-door neighbour. The curtains twitch after a wait that feels longer than it probably is, and then Betty appears in front of him wearing pajamas patterned with little ice cream cones. They make him smile and he doesn’t think it’s because he wants to make fun.

She slides the window up slowly and he steps into her room, glancing around at the soft light and feeling the warmth seep into his body. 

“Hey,” he says almost guiltily. 

“Hey.”

They stand looking at each other for a moment. Jughead knows he’s supposed to apologise and feels even more sure of this when Betty crosses her arms in front of her self-consciously.

He wants to tell her he waited for the sound of her car outside the trailer earlier; had half-expected her to come over anyway despite his instruction not to, but his mouth feels too dry to get the words out. He doesn’t want to admit any of this, either.

“Betty,” he manages, pressing the pads of his fingers against the cuff of his jacket. The material is icy cold. 

She’s breathing quickly, and he’s not sure whether she’s excited or nervous or both, but when he steps forward towards her, she takes a step forward too.

“Are we going to have sex?” she asks.

Jughead swallows. “Do you want to?”

She seems to think for a moment, as if it’s something she hasn’t considered. And then, very quietly, she says, “Yes.”

He captures her mouth with his, pressing hard - harder than he has before - so that she makes a kind of startled gasp which he receives against his tongue. His fingers slide through the strands of her hair - finally freed from its ponytail, and he likes it better like this. Down.

He inches her backwards towards her bed, careful not to press all of his weight against her when her back hits the mattress and his body covers hers. Jughead slides his hands under her pajama top and finds that her skin is warm and soft. 

There are no goosebumps tonight.

There’s no bra either - because of course there isn’t when she’s dressed for sleeping - and this realisation travels straight to his dick. His hands stroke upwards along the side of her ribcage and then across her bare tits so he can feel her nipples harden beneath his thumbs as she groans into his mouth.

He wants to hear her make that noise again when he puts his mouth around them.

There are buttons running down the front of her pajama top and he’s in two minds whether to free each one or to simply lift the garment over Betty’s head. He settles for the latter - impatient as his dick begins to push against his jeans - and then he gets her laid bare under the soft glow of the lamplight. 

She is, he thinks quite abruptly, pretty beautiful. 

Quickly, Jughead tugs down her pajama pants too, tossing them to the side so she’s completely naked beneath him. He lowers his mouth to her right nipple, grinning as her back bows and she tries to fight the noise building in her throat. He wants to make her scream so loud it’ll wake her parents. He half wants them to find him in her bed: throw him out; demand she tell them what she’s doing with such a bad boy.

(The other half of him wants to slip beneath the sheets beside her and sleep until his body doesn’t ache with the cold and the only thing that wakes him is her lips)

His moves his attention south, licking a path from the edge of her pussy to her belly button, then from her opening to her clit. He sucks hard when he gets there and notes the way her fingers clench around the sheets. He slips a finger inside and undoes her with ease not long after.

The pillow which is edged with lace catches her moan when she twists her head and Jughead grins against the inside of her thigh. Her skin is flushed when he lifts his gaze and he begins pulling off his own clothes in readiness.

Hs dick is hard already, so there’s no need for her to touch him, but when Betty says, “I want to see what you taste like,” he wishes he had his phone set to record.

He kneels in front of her and she glances briefly at the closed door before helping him out of his boxers. His dick springs free and if he’s not mistaken, she lets out something of a gasp when she sees him in all his glory.

Tentatively, she reaches out her hand, and just as she’s about to secure him in her grip, she whispers,

“I don’t really know what to do.”

He’s deliberately careful when he takes her hand in his, wrapping her fingers around the base of his shaft. “There,” he says. “Move your hand up and down.”

She does as he instructs, her grip pretty soft as she slides her hand towards the end of his dick.

“And then close your mouth around the tip.”

Betty lowers her mouth to him, swirling her tongue around his width as if she _ has,  _ in fact, done this before. Jughead can hear his breathing growing heavier as she sucks and strokes, and before he comes in her mouth he stops her - her name a single syllable he’s never used before,

“Betts.”

She looks up at him, green eyes wide as though she’s done something wrong, and so he’s quick to say, “Before… you know.”

She blushes and dips her head. “Oh.”

There’s an awkward silence as she watches him expectantly - waiting, he realises, for him to make the move. Get the condom from his jeans pocket. Lay her back against the pillows. 

He unwraps it from the foil, rolling it over his length as Betty watches with wide eyes and her lip trapped between her teeth. She’s still on her knees - nipples hard and a delicious kind of pink - as he inches forward, hands sliding around her waist to pull her closer so their bodies are flush and she sighs into his mouth. 

He kisses her until his lips feel separate from his brain, and then he guides her back against the collection of pillows, stroking his palm at the inside of her thigh so her legs fall open and he can position himself at her entrance.

“You sure?” he asks, catching himself off-guard.

“I’m sure.” 

She’s tight as he inches inside of her, careful not to go too far too fast as her body is adjusting to him. Her hands grip his forearms and he waits until the pressure of her fingertips against his skin lessens.

“Okay?”

Betty nods once. “Okay.”

Jughead pushes in further and she gasps as she stretches around him. He holds his weight on his elbows, muscles burning with the control of it all and then he sinks all the way inside of her. 

Again, he waits for her body to adjust and then begins to move slowly. Her eyes are closed and her head is turned against the pillow, and he kisses her neck, sucking at the skin so that her shallow breaths grow more rapid and her hips begin - very fractionally - to meet his. 

“Jug,” she whispers when he swipes his thumb across her clit, her eyes flickering open. He captures her lips, grinning against them when she opens her legs wider and wraps one of them around his waist. Betty slips her tongue against his and he groans into her mouth when the movement squeezes her walls around him. 

He palms her tits as he moves his lips back down from her mouth to her neck, sucking on the same spot he’d been laving earlier, his tongue drawing hot circles on the soft skin. She smells like strawberries and cream and his mouth waters even as he can taste her. 

She wraps her arms around him as he comes, stroking down his spine in a way that feels oddly familiar as a memory from long ago. Jughead shakes the thought out of his head and half-collapses against her, trying to catch his breath. 

Betty doesn’t make any real move to shift from beneath him and so he lies there, trying to fight his eyes closing. He knows though that he should get up before it gets even harder; get rid of the condom (he figures there has to be a waste paper bin in her room somewhere) head on back to Sunnyside before his dad gets home. 

“I should go,” he tells her, the words partially muffled by her warm skin. Her fingers still their stroking movement for a moment as though she’s thinking, and then -  _ then: _

“You could stay,” she whispers with heavy eyelids, barely even awake herself. “Stay.”


	6. Ignorance

He’s gone in the morning. Betty wakes slowly, unfurling her limbs from the foetal position inch by inch until she’s stretched out across the mattress. The sheets at the side of the bed Jughead had been occupying are cool and she senses he’s been gone a while.

There’s a pang of disappointment she tries to ignore but it’s difficult when she can still smell him on the cotton.

(She can smell him on her skin too)

Between her legs, there’s a sort-of dull ache. It’s not painful though, more just…  _ there _ …. And, strange or not, it makes her smile. She wonders if Polly is awake yet; wants to ask about the first time she’d slept with Jason - where it had been and how it had felt and whether, afterwards, things had been different. Bringing his name up is a risk though: Betty’s not sure quite how her sister is managing everything having been forced apart from the boy she loves after a pill had taken away what would’ve been their child. She wants to ask about that too: whether heartbreak really  _ does _ hurt like the movies show it; like the books describe it. 

Her phone is on the nightstand beside her bed and she checks it in case of a message. There isn’t one.

Her disappointment grows and she’s pretty glad that there’s school today - at least she’ll see him unlike those girls she’s heard of who wake up having fallen asleep with someone beside them, only to never see them again. Downstairs, she can hear her mom clattering in the kitchen which means she can talk to Polly without being overheard, and so she draws back the sheets. 

Polly’s door is closed and she knocks lightly: her sister has never been the best at rising early. She must be awake though as Betty hears a quiet,

“Come in,” and turns the handle.

“Hey Pol.”

“Betty? Am I late?”

“No,” she says, slipping herself under her sister’s covers. It’s warm and the pillow smells like her and she’s reminded of when they were little and they’d have sleepovers in each other’s beds without their parents knowing. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

Polly turns so she’s lying on her side. She really is beautiful, Betty thinks.

“Jughead came over last night.”

“What?!” she whisper-shrieks. “When?!”

“It was quite late - after we’d gone to bed.”

“He just came over? Without telling you first?”

There’s a smile on her face that grows when she tells her the next part. “Yes. Pol, we… I slept with him.”

“Ohmygod!” her sister says all in one breath. “Betty! How are you? Did he… Were you safe?”

Betty nods and burrows her cheek into the pillow. “He was sweet.”

“Jughead  _ Jones? _ ”

“He  _ is _ sweet sometimes. He’s… I don’t know. He’s not what everyone seems to think he is.”

“How do you feel?” Polly asks.

“Good I think. A little sore maybe.”

“It didn’t hurt too much?”

“A bit. It wasn’t too bad.”

“And then he just left?”

She shakes her head against the soft cotton. “He stayed. Or… at least he did for a bit. He’d gone when I woke up this morning.”

“Are you happy?” she asks.

Betty considers the question for a moment and slips her hand beneath her cheek. “Yeah. I like him.”

Polly smiles and it almost reaches her eyes. “That’s great Betty.”

She pauses before she asks her next question, unsure of whether it’s the right time. The scent of fresh coffee wafts from downstairs and she takes a breath. “When you were with Jason for the first time, did you feel different?”

Polly’s eyes cloud with tears and so she reaches to cover her hand with her own. “I’m okay,” she whispers, evidently not. “And yeah - I felt different.”

“Good different?”

“ _ Wonderfully _ different,” she replies. “ Like my stomach and my chest felt light and fluttery and I was… I don’t know… I kind of felt warm all over whenever I thought about it.”

“You’ll see him again soon, right? I mean, it’s nearly Valentine’s and -”

“-Girls!” Alice shouts from downstairs, interrupting them. Betty squeezes Polly’s hand once more and then slips back out from under the covers. “I _ am _ sorry Pol.”

Her sister offers a small smile as she sniffs. “Thanks.”

Just as she opens the door, she hears her name. “Yeah?”

“If you like him, then I’ll do whatever I can to cover for you so mom and dad don’t find out.”

“That’s… thank you.”

“He’s what you want?” she confirms. “Jughead?”

Betty recalls his hands on her skin and his lips on her mouth and the way he’d looked at her in his trailer only a few nights ago. “Yeah,” she says. “I think he is.”  

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead isn’t in math class when Betty gets there. He doesn’t arrive partway through like she expects either, and for the duration of the class she worries that he’s avoiding her. She forgets to pay attention and when the teacher asks her a question, she’s unable to answer. Sweet Pea isn’t there either, and Betty’s glad because it’s one less person to look her way and see the redness rising in her cheeks

The bell rings and she heads to biology. It rings close to an hour later and she doesn’t pass him in the hallway, nor by her locker, nor in the cafeteria at lunch. Toni is there in fifth period and Betty contemplates asking her about Jughead’s whereabouts, but ultimately decides against it when she’s approached by her fellow Valentine’s Dance committee members about the colour of the streamers for the gym. 

When the bell rings signalling the end of final period, she doesn’t rush to the bus. Polly has cheerleading practice and the wind has dropped enough that it doesn’t feel quite so raw outside, and so she decides to walk home. She gathers what she needs from her locker and fastens her coat, wrapping her scarf around her neck so she can bury her chin into the soft wool. With her books clutched to her chest, Betty heads out into the parking lot and as she’s crossing the cleared asphalt, she spots a familiar motorcycle parked at the edge of the lot. 

It’s not the only vehicle - there are still a handful of others occupying spaces - but it’s different enough to the sedans that it’s the first thing she sees. Dressed head-to-toe in black is Jughead, standing beside the bike with a helmet tucked under his arm. Her heart rate speeds up and it feels as though it’s beating in her throat. Her palms are sweaty too despite the temperature, and she makes sure not to speed up in any way as she makes her way towards him.

“Cooper,” he says when she reaches him, and she feels breathless all of a sudden. 

“You weren’t at school today,” Betty replies. And then, quieter, she adds, “You weren’t there when I woke up.”

“Something came up.”

His tone is strange - off, but in a way she can’t quite define. “Right.”

A moment passes and neither say anything more. But then, “Let me give you a ride.”

She shuffles her feet to keep the cold out. “I was planning on walking.”

His voice is softer when he tilts his head slightly to the side. He takes the books from her arms and she lets him, as if she’s watching herself from a different perspective.

“C’mon Betts.” There’s a pause. His tone shifts again. “My dad will be out.”

Momentarily, she thinks of the freezing cold and that ratty blanket he’d offered her the last time. But there’s also a look in his eyes that some people might describe as a twinkle - the kind of look adults warn young girls about - and Betty feels any kind of protest she might’ve been about to put up slip away. 

“Okay.”

She climbs onto the back of his bike and wraps her arms around his waist. She’s close enough to smell him and she takes a deep breath, her lungs filling with that faint cigarette smoke and pine combination that, strangely, makes her mouth water. The engine roars into life and the seat vibrates beneath her ass and she feels something stir low in her stomach. 

  
  
  
  
  


Sunnyside is still banked in snow, though it’s not white like it had been the last time she was here, but a sad, depressed grey that seems befitting of the surroundings. Not for the first time, Betty wonders what it must’ve been like to grow up here, and she wants to ask Jughead about it all. 

There are lots of questions she has for him: Where is his mom? Why did she leave? Is he safe in that trailer with its broken heater and his father who’s clearly an alcoholic? She wants him to tell her the whole story, and yet it’s not like she’s been an open book with him either. 

_ I want to share with you, _ she thinks as they come to a stop just outside of his trailer. _ I need to know who you are. _

Jughead kisses her as soon as they’re inside of the trailer and the door is closed. It’s more a crash of lips than anything romantic, but that feeling stirred up by the bike’s vibrations intensifies as he backs her into the counter. The formica is hard against her back - even with her thick winter coat - but she doesn’t feel it for long as they’re moving so Jughead can free her from the down padding. His fingers are a little slower than they have been the past few times they’ve done this, which Betty attributes to the cold and the fact he rides without gloves. The skin that’s not covered by black ink is red and rough, and she wants to take his hands in hers to pass on some warmth.

He does manage to unbutton her coat though, and then once it’s off and hanging on the hook beside the door, his hands span her waist and she’s suddenly atop the counter, right knee rising as his hands move to either side of her neck and her head bumps back against the cabinet.

He’s rougher than he’d been the previous night in her bedroom, but his hands are making goosebumps erupt across her skin and it’s not at all because she’s cold. 

Betty tugs at his jacket and he helps her out, flinging it somewhere behind him which she thinks is the general direction of the couch. Then his mouth is on her neck sucking hot, wet kisses. His hands slide under her sweater and across her stomach, moving upwards until they’re at the material of her bra. She can feel his grin against her skin and she wants to urge him on; tell him  _ more, Jug _ (or at least something along those lines) but her jaw goes slack as his thumb slips beneath the material, brushing the underside of her breast before travelling to her nipple. It  _ is _ more. It’s more but there’s now an insistent thumping between her legs -  _ more _ more - and it’s suddenly not enough. 

Her hands are pulling at his sweater before she registers much about it, and then Jughead is forced to pull his mouth away to lift the garment over his head. It lands somewhere on the kitchen floor and is then joined by her sweater. Maybe she should be cold, but she isn’t. Her skin feels like ice but his breath is fire and when he licks across her collarbone, she melts.

Something of a whimper escapes her mouth and she wants him to do it again but she also wants his mouth elsewhere. He presses his groin against her and she can feel the beginnings of an erection. It almost makes her smile - the fact that they’ve at least done  _ this _ enough times that she knows how his dick feels against her centre - but the action presses the seam of her jeans against her clit and she gasps quietly instead. 

Briefly, as his fingers find the clasp of her bra, Betty wonders whether they’re going to have sex right there on the kitchen counter. She thinks she might want to: it’s so far removed from anything she ever did back in New York that there’s a thrill dancing inside of her at the thought of it. It’s so different from the previous night too, when there’d been warm, clean sheets and the soft lamplight and patterned pajamas that he’d told her in a whisper were _ pretty fucking cute. _

Jughead’s fingers at the button of her jeans bring her back to the present and she lifts her hips and ass to help him pull them down. He can’t get them past her ankles because her boots are still on, and there’s a moment of awkwardness while she toes them off so her jeans can also join the haphazard distribution of clothing on the floor. 

Betty knows she’s wet. Has been since she climbed off the bike outside, knowing exactly what was in store. Or - as she discovers when he nips at the inside of her thigh with his front teeth - not  _ exactly, _ but something close to it. The action sends a jolt through her and her head falls back against the cabinet again. Jughead places his hands either side of her hips and then squeezes so he can move her to the edge of the counter.

“Jug-” she starts, but falters when his mouth covers the damp material of her underwear.

“You won’t,” he says gruffly in response to her unvoiced _ I’m going to fall,  _ and the timbre of his voice against her clit sends a burst of air shooting out of her mouth. He runs his tattooed hand along the inside of her right leg and then drapes it so it’s over his shoulder. 

She watches him bend - not quite all the way to his knees - in front of her before he circles his thumb roughly over her clit and she cries out. Her underwear is still on but somehow this feels dirtier; she already knows he’s going to make her come while it’s still on, and just that thought alone sends a rush of wetness to her core.

His mouth covers her again, his tongue pushing at her entrance and her whole body stiffens as she comes against him, her hands tightening around the edge of the countertop until every part of her goes loose again. 

Jughead gives her no time to catch her breath before he’s lifting her against him, hands hooking in the sides of her panties as he carries her into the square patch of threadbare carpeted hallway off of which his bedroom leads. 

He sets her on his bed, not roughly, but not particularly softly either. 

“You’re not going to take them off?” he asks when she adjusts her underwear so it’s sitting properly where it’s supposed to. He’s already undoing the buckle on his belt and she wants to be brave and say something like _ I want you to do it, _ but of course, her mouth doesn’t comply.

“I uh…” she murmurs instead. “Yeah.”  

In her awkward embarrassment, she misses him rolling on a condom, but then he’s hovering over her, she can feel the heat radiating from his chest and as his dick nudges her clit and she gasps, Betty hears him say, throatily,

“Fuck.”

He slides in slowly but she can tell from the way his veins are prominent on his forearms that it’s taking a significant amount of self control. She finds that as he fills her fully, she’s still sore from yesterday. That thought alone makes her happy in a way she hadn’t anticipated: like she’s sore from him -  _ because _ of him - and she wonders whether there’s something wrong with her. 

Her legs wrap around Jughead’s waist and he palms her breasts as he moves, gasping hot breaths against her skin that make her tingle all down her right side, and she finds herself saying,

“Faster.”

The word unleashes something and he adjusts their position, turning her so she’s lying on her side and he can rock into her in a way that makes it difficult to breathe properly; in a way that has her grabbing for the edge of the mattress and turning her face into her pillow so it muffles the sounds leaving her mouth. 

He comes only a few minutes later, his breaths rough and choppy against her shoulder, her legs almost boneless despite the fact that she’s still aching in a way that’s partly sore and partly seeking relief, and as Betty begins to turn towards him, his fingers rub over her, one sliding inside and against her front wall so that when he applies pressure, she comes almost violently around him. 

He disappears quickly into the bathroom to rid himself of the condom and Betty shivers without his body heat. He returns to join her under the sheets and she rolls so that she’s snuggled into his side, tracing her fingers along the tattoos that decorate his skin. 

“What was the first one you got?” she asks.

“The serpent,” he replies, shifting slightly so she can see the design on his shoulder. “We all have them.”

“Like a gang symbol?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

“Which one’s your favourite?” Betty asks, now drawing along the intricate arrow of his right hand. 

He’s quiet for a while, and she assumes he’s thinking about his answer until he draws in a breath and says in a strange tone, “I don’t have one.”

She swallows and pauses in her ministrations. “You designed them all?”

“Yes.”

“What does this one mean?”

Jughead looks down at his hand as if he’s unsure of the inking she’s talking about. “Defence.”

She begins tracing it again, watching as his fingers twitch a little. “It’s beautiful.”

  
  
  
  
  


Betty’s sweater is creased when she pulls it back on. His is too, but less noticeable, and she doubts his dad will have anything to say about it. Her mom on the other hand will definitely be able to tell, and she quickly fastens her coat over the offending evidence. 

“You don’t have to drop me,” she says as she pulls on her boots and Jughead grabs his keys.

He shrugs and then replies, “It’s cold,” like the temperature is the only reason he’d even consider taking her home. History has told her though that he’d take her anyway, dropping her off not on Elm Street where her mom will hear the roar of the engine, but on the next block.

He pushes the bike until it’s on the main track running through the trailer park, and then Betty climbs onto the back, pulling the only helmet he has over her head before wrapping her arms around him for the second time that day. She has the urge to rest her cheek against his back but the hard shell of the helmet prevents her from doing so and she bites her lip instead. 

Jughead drives slowly and they reach Birch Street just as Archie Andrews turns onto the block. He’s wearing the clothes he usually wears for football practice, and he pauses as the motorcycle arrives at a stop. Betty climbs off and hands Jughead the helmet. 

“Hey,” she says to Archie, expecting him to return the greeting and continue on his way.

He does the former, but then adds, “You heading home?”

“Yeah, I uh… yeah.”

She doesn’t miss the exchange between the two boys: silent but heavy with unspoken words, and she kisses Jughead goodbye. “See you tomorrow,” she says, raising her hand in a wave, and he nods at her but doesn’t reply.

He rides off, much faster than he’d brought her here, and Betty feels a sense of unease as she and Archie continue along the sidewalk. 

“Your parents don’t know you’ve been seeing him?” he asks.

Betty turns her head towards him. “Please don’t say anything.”

He lets out something of a chuckle. “I’ve seen him climbing through your bedroom window for the past few weeks. I’m not going to say anything.”

She swallows in relief. “Thank you.”

They continue walking and as they reach the corner of the block, Archie stops. “Betty, just…”

“What?”

He doesn’t say anything, and she she widens her eyes. “Archie, _ what? _ ”

He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

He speeds up and she has to do a half-jog just to keep up with him. “Is it about Jughead?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t  _ seem _ like nothing.”

“It is,” he counters. “You should just forget I said anything.”

They reach his house and he lingers a moment longer, but ultimately says nothing more other than, “See you.”

“Bye,” Betty whispers as he’s almost inside. Archie closes the door without turning around and she’s left wondering what on earth he’d been about to tell her.


	7. Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who commented and sent messages after the last chapter. You're so sweet and I promise I'm getting around to replying, but I've been crazy busy and thought you'd prefer a new chapter before a reply. Keep them coming though - they're great motivation ;)

There’s a knock on the trailer door. It’s Betty’s knock, Jughead knows, distinctly different from the way everyone else around here slams the underside of their fist against the flimsy wood. Hers is quiet and polite - three staccato raps of her knuckles on beats one, three and four.  

“Your girl’s here Jug,” his dad says gruffly as though he assumes he hasn’t heard the sound, even though he’s the one closest. 

“She’s not -” he starts, but abruptly stops because somehow, Betty kind of _ has  _ become just that: his girl. He’s won the bet and taken her virginity (an additional extra, as acknowledged by Sweet Pea and Fangs) and he’d never intended to keep… well, doing her. They’d been supposed to break up (or whatever the equivalent of that is when you’re not actually in a relationship) but they haven’t. He still kisses her in the parking lot and takes her home, dropping her off a block away so her mom won’t hear the roar of his motorcycle and Archie Andrews won’t stare at him as though they hadn’t once been friends.

“I’ve got it,” Jughead finishes instead, pulling open the door to reveal Betty, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in a show of how cold it is outside.

“Hey,” she says, smiling against his mouth as she leans in to kiss him. His chest feels a little tight as he pulls back to close the door, very aware of both his father at the sink and wave of icy air now sweeping through the trailer. 

FP turns away but not without raising an eyebrow, and Jughead ducks his head. “I’ll just grab my jacket,” he tells her as he stuffs his wallet into his back pocket. 

“Jug,” his dad warns right before he opens the door so they can leave, that tone of his reminding of the no-alcohol rule only one of them observes. He raises a hand in pointless acknowledgement: there’s no way in the world he’d want to emulate the staggering, gibbering shadow of his father in any way. They leave, the wooden stairs groaning under their weight and the strain of the harsh winter weather.

“You look…” he begins, and then realises _ nice  _ isn’t what he means. “You look good,” he chooses instead, and Betty frames his face as she kisses him.

“Thank you Juggie,” she replies against his lips. “You look good too.”

  
  
  
  
  


The thing about South Side parties is that they’re not predictable in the way that every party on the North Side is. Jughead thinks about explaining this to Betty, but decides against it when she climbs off of his bike and he discovers that what he’d initially assumed were tights are actually stockings, judging by the flash of bare thigh. 

He looks at her hand but doesn’t take it, slinging an arm around her shoulder instead. When she snuggles a little closer as they cross the parking lot, he catches that scent of strawberries again and wonders what she might taste like if he were to pour cream over her and then lick it off. 

The music inside the Wyrm is thumping: hard and loud and heavy as they step over the threshold. Toni is already there with Cheryl, nestled into a booth with eyes only for her girlfriend, and Fangs is there too, leaning over the bar to pour his own Jack Daniels until Penny Peabody snatches it off of him. 

“You want a drink?” Jughead asks Betty, heading to the bar anyway because that’s what people do at parties - they drink. 

“Sure,” she replies, leaning close enough that he can feel her lips brush the shell of his ear. It makes the hairs on his arms stand up and something along his neck prickles.  

Penny serves them a coke and a vodka-soda, and he guides Betty to a booth where the music isn’t quite so loud and people aren’t pressing against them to get to their intended destination. 

“Do you spend much time here?” she asks him.

He shrugs, attempting nonchalance. “Not much.”

“How come?”

Jughead hasn’t spent all that much time with her just talking, but he  _ has  _ learned that she’ll keep pressing until she gets the information she wants (or, at least, the information she  _ thinks  _ she wants)

He shrugs again without reply and she nestles closer. “You do that a lot.”

“Do what?”

“Shrugging. When you’re uncomfortable or you don’t know what to say. Your jaw twitches too.”

He is suddenly very,  _ very _ aware of the clenching of his muscles. Denying she’s right seems pointless, and so he raises an eyebrow. “Anything else you’ve observed about me, Betty Cooper?”

“Your fingers twitch when you want a cigarette.”

He swallows.

“You let me tutor you because you care about your grades.”

His ears feel like they’re on fire and he doesn’t think it’s because her breath is burning them. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s not entirely  _ un _ true either.

“So you’ve got me all figured out then?” Jughead’s voice is steady, but his pulse suddenly feels erratic and he wonders whether she can tell.

This time, it’s Betty’s tun to shrug. “Not exactly,” she says. “But I’m working on it.”

The song pulsing through the speakers changes to something with a similar tempo but different lyrics, and he tugs her by the hand. “Let’s dance.”

Their drinks sit on the table, relatively untouched, and she leans forward to announce, suggestively, “I have a surprise for you - later.”

He clears his throat and tugs her closer. “Can’t wait.”

  
  
  
  
  


It’s raining when they leave the party. He rides at speed the short distance between the Wyrm and his trailer, dodging the potholes that’ll ruin his tyres and Betty’s shoes, and they arrive to windows that look black. 

FP had been propping up the bar opposite Penny, swirling whiskey around a glass with ominous rhythm so Jughead knows they have the place to themselves for a while. 

He jams his key into the lock and turns it, shoving the door with his right shoulder to aid its opening, and Betty stands in front of him, soaked through and pretty fucking close to catching hypothermia he guesses. Still, she looks at him from under heavy eyelids and says, very simply,

“I want you to fuck me.”

His mouth goes dry and his breath catches somewhere it’s not supposed to, and he can see the nerves behind those six syllables. But he’ll be damned if he doesn’t deliver.

He closes the gap between them, roughly pulling her against him so the wet material of her coat smacks against his jacket and he half-bites her lip as he slides his tongue into her mouth.

Behind him, the door provides leverage so he can spin them, pressing her back against the wood as he slides his palm up along the outside of her thigh. He’d been right earlier: she  _ is _ wearing stockings.

Suddenly, Jughead wants nothing more than to rip off her skirt and that blouse that’s been tucked in all night so he can see her underwear too. Betty’s head bumps back against the door and he picks her up, sucking on her pulse point until he can hear nothing but her choppy breaths in his ear drowning out the drumming of the rain on the trailer’s roof.

Her legs tighten around him and he gets them to the couch, her skirt now pushed up so it’s seated at her waist; his hands roaming under her blouse and over the material of her bra. She bites down on his lip and he groans involuntarily. Briefly, she pulls back and away from him, and so he opens his eyes to find her watching him.

“What is it?”

“Do you like it?” she asks him. “When I do that?”

“Bite my lip?”

“Yeah.”

Jughead pauses to think despite already knowing the answer. “Yeah.”

She nods, a grin stretching her mouth wide as she leans in again and murmurs, “Okay.”

Betty tugs down on his bottom lip again, biting a little harder this time as she presses her centre against him. His jeans are tight and he needs them off; needs her clothes off too - all of them. 

They make a pile on the floor: hers then his, then hers again in some sort of reverse jenga, until he’s dressed in only his boxers and she in only her bra and panties. They’re black and red. Satin and lace with a ribbon tying the back of her panties to the front, and he’s unprepared for how much his mouth waters; how much he wants to untie them with his teeth; how fucking sexy she is sitting atop him with her tits spilling over the cups and her green eyes rimmed with heavy black.

He fingers the ribbon and hears himself half-whispering, “It’s not pastel.”

“You like it?” Betty asks, and he nods with his mouth open - probably drooling. He runs his hands over her, up and down and back up again, pushing at her bra so there’s more of her on display; pulling at the hem of her panties so he can squeeze the top of her ass.

He lowers his mouth to her skin and sucks and licks and bites down gently so she’s rocking on top of him and gasping things like, “Take them off, Jughead,” in his ear. 

His fingers are clumsy - momentarily reminding him of the very first time he did this with Penny, only her underwear didn’t match like Betty’s always does and her eyes weren’t soft in the way Betty’s are when she’d said the exact same words (only, replacing the  _ Jughead _ with Forsythe)

He doesn’t want to remember Penny though. He wants this - now - ingrained in his memory so he can replay it when he’s alone in the shower. 

“Juggie,” Betty says so softly that it’s hard to swallow, and when he looks up at her, her eyes are wide. 

He takes the thin strip of material between the two cups of her bra in his teeth and tugs, snapping it back against her skin so she gasps and whines. She’s wet enough when he finally removes the scrap of material covering her that he can help guide her down onto his dick with no preamble. Her eyes close and she leans her forehead against his, and Jughead presses his palms at either side of her hips, lifting her and then pushing back down until she can follow the rhythm herself. 

Before long, she picks up the pace and then he flips them so she’s on her lying on her back. He can go faster this way - harder - and she moans loud enough that if there’s anyone walking outside, they’ll hear. He squeezes her nipple, tweaking between his thumb and first two fingers while her hips cant upwards with every thrust. 

“Again,” she breathes when he tilts her entire body to the side. 

He obeys, holding her in place as he angles his hips in just the right way that it sends her flying over the edge with something of a scream. He follows as her muscles squeeze around him, collapsing against her as they both try and catch their breath. 

It takes Jughead a minute before he has the energy to pull himself off of her to dispose of the condom, and on his return he brings the blanket from the edge of his bed so Betty won’t get cold. 

She turns her head towards him with a smile, and a strange feeling rolls upwards from his toes to the tips of his ears. 

“Thanks,” she says, taking the edge from him to cover herself, and he finds himself snuggling in beside her.

“You wanna watch a movie?”

She burrows closer still and hums in a way that makes  _ him _ tired. 

“It’s late,” she replies.

“Right. I can give you a ride?”

“Oh.” She sits up straighter. “I uh… I thought maybe I could stay? I mean, my parents think I’m at a sleepover and Polly said she’d cover if…But yeah, maybe I should -”

“- Stay, Betty,” he finds himself staying. He turns towards her so she’s tucked back against his side, and he realises he means it. 

“Really?”

Jughead smooths his hand over her warm skin and nods. “I’ll take you home in the morning.”

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead doesn’t fall asleep right away like Betty does. He lies awake for an hour or so, wondering why he doesn’t care that his arm has gone dead, and why he doesn’t want to risk waking her so he can move it. Her breaths are even against his neck, warm and sweet-smelling as if she’d drunk something other than vodka-soda earlier at the Wyrm, and he breathes her in. When she stirs, he plants a kiss softly at her temple and she settles back against him. 

The next time he has a conscious thought, his bedroom isn’t the inky-blackness it had been before, but cast in soft shadows that fall over the bed and the set of drawers against the wall. . 

“Good morning,” Betty rasps, and he feels his stomach somersault as his arm pulls her closer like it has its own agenda.

“Mmm,” he mumbles. It’s too early for words and he’s warm and so is she, and he wants to do something _ else _ with his mouth.

Jughead rolls them so he can slide his hand along her side, feeling the dip of her waist and the curves of her tits and ass, and then begins kissing her neck. She arches against him, grazing his length with her ass, and he slips his fingers between her legs, stroking at her clit as she turns her face into the pillow. 

“Jug,” she gasps, rocking her hips, and she doesn’t have to say anything more. He withdraws his hand briefly, finding a condom from the drawer beside the bed, and once he rolls it on, uses the same hand to part her thighs, lifting her right leg just high enough that he’s able to slide in. 

He goes slowly, rocking in and out without hurry, his hand stroking along her body and over her nipples, circling them as she keens and moans softly, her own hand reaching back to stroke his face. He catches it, kissing the tips of her fingers in a move he’s never done before, and then links them with his, bringing their joined hands to rest beside the pillow. 

He comes first, spilling into the condom inside of her, and then uses his mouth to send Betty over the edge too. 

After he’s cleaned himself up in the bathroom, Jughead rejoins her again, pulling her back against him so he can nuzzle at her neck. 

“This is a comfy bed,” she tells him, inhaling deeply and sighing with contentment. “And you’re warm.”

“You’re warm too,” he replies. “And soft.”

“It’s Kiehl’s.”

“What?”

“My moisturiser. It’s strawberry-scented - from Kiehl’s.”

_ I can tell,  _ he almost says, but decides against it, thinking again about what it might be like to pour cream over her. “You want a shower?”

“No,” she sighs again. “I should probably get going before my mom finds out where I am.”

_ Right, _ he thinks.  _ Of course.  _ “I’ll hop in real quick and then give you a ride.”

“That’s okay,” Betty says. “I can walk. It’s sunny out.”

“You sure?”

She turns to face him, leaning up on her elbow so she’s at an angle she can kiss him, and he finds himself smiling against her mouth. “You’re sweet,” she says. “But I wouldn’t mind the walk.”

Jughead kisses her once more - a stamp of his lips against hers - and then draws back the sheets. 

He showers under the hot water, and the pipes don’t even groan until around ten minutes in. He shuts the water off and wraps a towel around his waist, and as he’s rubbing his hand over the fogged mirror he hears voices. 

His father’s and… Betty’s?

Quickly, he pulls on some clothes and towels his hair so the ends aren’t dripping onto his sweater, and then heads into the kitchen where he sees the girl who’d been in his bed twenty minutes ago sipping coffee next to his bleary-eyed father. 

“Dad,” he announces in a tone that indicates a question.

“Mornin’ son.” he nods towards Betty. “Told her she shouldn’t be going out into the cold without a cup of coffee at least.”

This time, it’s Jughead’s turn to nod. “Right.”

She drains what’s left in her mug and then rises so she can set it in the sink. When she turns on the tap to clean it too, FP jokes, “You should have her stay over more often,” but neither of them laugh. Betty smiles politely and squeezes some liquid soap onto the sponge as Jughead fills his own mug with what’s left in the pot, and there’s an uneasy minute where the only sound is the water splashing. 

“I should get going,” Betty announces. “Thank you for the coffee Mr Jones.”

The corner of his mouth turns up. “You’re welcome.”

Jughead walks with her to the door and lingers as she opens it before turning back to face him. He wants to kiss her. He’s also pretty sure  _ she  _ wants him to kiss her. His dad is watching though, and all he manages is a raise of his hand.

“See you Monday,” Betty says softly, and then descends the steps. He closes the door, the trailer now significantly colder than it had been, and his dad says,

“She’s different to the other girls you usually have.”

“Yeah,” he replies. “She is.”

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead spends his weekend with Sweet Pea in the Wyrm Hole, sketching designs and steering the conversation away from Betty and the bet that now feels pretty redundant. By Sunday night, the smell of her in his sheets is still there - a little fainter than it had been the previous night, but there all the same - and ten hours seems too long to wait to see her.

“Fuck it,” he mumbles to Hot Dog, the stuffed animal that usually resides deep at the back of a drawer. There’s no response (obviously, because this isn’t Toy Story) and so he tosses the thing against his pillow and heads on out.

It’s still early enough that the lights in the Cooper house are on when he reaches Elm Street, and so he’s more careful than he’s been in the past when it comes to collecting the ladder from the garage. He sets it against the window ledge, hoping that Archie isn’t performing his one-man neighbourhood watch. He doesn’t turn to check.

Climbing up, he hopes that she’ll be in her room - maybe he should’ve sent her a text - and as he reaches the top of the ladder, he discovers that she isn’t. The bedside lamp is on though - indicating that she can’t be far away - and the door is ajar too. Jughead doesn’t risk knocking on the glass: if her parents are walking past and hear him, that’ll be the end of these sneak-overs, and he doesn’t think he’s quite done just yet.

A few minutes later, Betty enters her room in a dressing gown and pajamas, and with a towel wrapped around her hair. He chances knocking - making sure it’s light - and her eyes widen when she looks up and sees him before a smile breaks out across her face.

Quickly, she closes her bedroom door and then crosses to the window to let him in. 

“What’re you doing here?” she whispers, but doesn’t wait for him to answer, pulling him by the collar of his jacket so she can kiss him instead.

He grins against her mouth. “This.”

They inch backwards towards her bed, the soft comforter brushing against them, and Jughead pulls his jacket off, tossing it in the general direction of her window seat, and suddenly she stops.

“Oh… I uh… I got my period last night.”

He frowns, confused as to why she’s telling him. And then he realises: she thinks he’s here to have sex with her.

And that’s when _ he _ realises that hadn’t been his intention at all: he’d just wanted to  _ be  _ with her.

“That’s…” he starts. “That’s okay. We don’t have to.”

It’s a little awkward afterwards. He stands at the edge of her bed and Betty toys with the cuffs of her dressing gown like she’s embarrassed. 

“You want to just… hang out?” he asks.

The smile on her face makes him smile too, something he thinks might be relief flowing through him as she says, “That’d be nice.”

They settle on her bed, both lying so they can see the tv, and Jughead finds himself stroking through Betty’s hair in rhythmic succession.

“Can I ask you something?” she questions after a while.

His eyes are heavy, barely open when he says, “Mmmm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?”

They fly open wide. “Who told you that?”

“Your dad, yesterday morning. I asked you if you had any siblings, and you said no.”

She’s looking at him now, propped up on her elbow with a furrowed brow. “She doesn’t live with us.”

“She lives in Toledo, right? With your mom?”

_ Jesus, _ he thinks.  _ How much did his dad tell her? _ “I haven’t seen her in a while.” 

It’s quiet: a pause in her quest for information. And then, “Do you miss her?” She strokes along his arm gently until her hand comes to rest at his cheek. “I just…. If we’re going to be together Jug, I want to know who you are - all of it.”

Those irises of hers are so green, he decides. So honest. “I need to tell you something,” he stutters. 

They close and she rests her head back against his chest, trailing her fingers absent-mindedly along his jaw. “What is it?”

Betty burrows a little closer, her eyes still closed. “I...I like you Betty. And…”

There’s a sleepy grin on her face, content and quiet. “I like you too.”

It’s quiet again for a while. A long while. “There’s something else.”

Jughead expects her to open her eyes, but when she doesn’t, he realises she’s fallen asleep. Some of her hair has fallen across her face and he smooths it away before reaching to turn out the lamp.

  
  
  
  


He sneaks back out again early the next morning, before it’s even gotten light outside. He showers and redresses and then brews coffee strong enough to wake the dead, which he drinks at the kitchen table, thinking about Jellybean and wondering if she drinks coffee now too, or if she pours hot water onto a teabag like he always remembers Gladys doing.

He arrives at school earlier than usual - early enough to join the other Serpents in the break room - and Sweet Pea whistles. “Here’s the loser himself.” The gang laughs and Jughead sets his jaw.

“You’re the loser - I’m the one who won the bet, remember?”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Sweet Pea laughs. “You only won the bet because Betty thinks she’s your girlfriend. That doesn’t count.”

“She’s  _ not _ my girlfriend,” Jughead counters, clenching his fists against the rising anger in his chest.

“Yeah? Well someone might want to tell  _ her  _ that.”

There’s another eruption of laugher, but then Toni - who, Jughead realises, hasn’t laughed once - turns white, her eyes widening as she swallows. He turns to look in the direction of the entrance, and that’s when he sees her.

Her eyes are glassy and her lips are parted as though she might be about to say something, and as he opens his to lie  _ it’s not what it sounds like,  _ she turns on her heel, clutching her books to her chest as she all but runs out of the room.

“Betty!” he calls after her, jumping off of the table. “Betty!”

She doesn’t turn back. She doesn’t stop running.

He doesn’t follow. 


	8. Repercussions

Everything hurts. Her chest. Her legs. Her heart.

Betty keeps running: along the hallway with no regard for Principal Weatherbee’s, “No running!”; flying out into the parking lot and past Jughead’s bike; along the sidewalk so the grey buildings are blurred and the traffic is blurred and the sound of horns honking is blurred.

She’s a bet. Her body - every inch of it that Jughead has seen and kissed and pleasured - is a bet. 

Only when, through the fog, she hears a bell chime does Belly realise she’s made it to Pop’s. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do now, but she can’t go home. Can’t tell her mom what’s happened; can’t say  _ the boy who’s been sneaking into my room at night wasn’t doing it because he liked me, but because my virginity was a prize. The boy who I thought was my new boyfriend is a better actor than I’ve seen in any movie and I’m sorry I didn’t learn from Polly’s mistakes. I’m sorry I fell for it. I’m sorry you were right.  _

“You look like you need a bigger cup than usual,” Pop tells her kindly, and pours coffee into a mug she thinks might be the one he usually drinks from. He doesn’t mention anything about it being a school day, and she pulls her lips gratefully into what might be something resembling a smile.

Mindlessly, she sips at the hot liquid - no sweetener to take the edge off, just burning, bitter blackness.  _ Like Jughead’s heart, _ she finds herself thinking.  _ Or, perhaps, like the hole where his heart should be. _

Pop stops by some time later with more coffee and the largest wedge of cherry pie Betty has ever been given. She stabs it with her fork and shoves a mouthful past her lips, repeating her actions until there’s nothing but crumbs on the plate and her stomach hurts and her nails sink through the skin of her palms just so she can think about something else. 

  
  
  
  
  


Pop refuses to take any money for the endless coffee and the pie. He places his palm over her outstretched hand and says,

“Whatever it is, it won’t always feel like this.”

Alice is in the living room when she reaches their house, technically still before school is out, and she looks up from her book, pushing her reading glasses further up her nose. 

“Elizabeth? Why aren’t you in school?”

“I’m sick,” she says quickly, heading for the stairs.

“Not so fast,” he mom counters, rising from the couch. “Let me check your temperature.”

Her nails press back into her palms, breaking the skin. “Mom, I really don’t feel well. I just want to go to bed.”

The words are such an effort and she starts up the stairs without waiting for a reply. Alice must concede, because Betty hears a sigh but there are no footsteps following her. 

In her bedroom, she closes the door behind her and looks at the window Jughead has climbed through without invite more times than she can now count on one hand. She makes sure it’s locked, closes the drapes, and then sinks beneath her duvet.

Later, there’s a soft knock at her door which is followed by a dip in the mattress. 

“Betty?” Polly asks gently.

She sniffs and wipes her eyes with the sheet. There are black smudges when she opens them again to question, “Everyone knows?”

There’s a pause and Polly shuffles closer. “Cheryl told me.”

From her answer, Betty figures it’s a yes. 

“Toni stopped him from coming here.”

_ Of course, _ she thinks.  _ They were all in on it. _ “I thought he meant it Pol,” she chokes. 

“I know.”

“Sometimes he looks - _ looked  _ \- at me like…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. Doesn’t even want to think about it.

Polly’s fingers begin to comb through her hair. It reminds her of how Jughead would do it: so soft and careful, and more tears leak from her eyes. “Mom’s making chicken soup,” she says. “Shall I tell her you’re asleep?”

Betty nods and turns her face further into the pillow.

  
  
  
  
  


Darkness cloaks the town a few hours later. Betty lays there, blinking with wet eyelashes into the blackness as she replays Polly’s words from earlier: _ Toni stopped him from coming here. _

The garage will still be unlocked, she realises. If Jughead were to come over, he’ll be able to reach her window, and if he can reach her window, she doesn’t doubt that he’d know how to pick the lock. 

_ All boys are bad, Betty,  _ she hears her mom say back in New York when she hadn’t been allowed to date; when the repercussions of Polly and Jason’s relationship would’ve prevented this. _ All boys are bad.  _

And bad boys are worse.

She throws back the sheets and yanks on the sweatshirt folded on her vanity stool. Outside, the cold air nips at her skin, her pajama bottoms doing nothing to prevent the goosebumps rising on her legs as she sticks the key into the lock, turning until she hears a click. She tries the door handle afterwards, satisfied only when it doesn’t budge, and then steps back away from it. From above, warm golden light spills onto the ground and casts her shadow, and she looks up to see Archie Andrews peering out of his window. He sees her and there’s a moment when both of them recognise what’s happening: he knows exactly what she’s doing. Still, he nods and offers a small, friendly smile and then leaves her to it.

By the time Betty gets back upstairs, her fingers are freezing but at least her eyes are no longer wet (though, she supposes, her tears might have frozen on her face - it’s hard to tell) She crawls back under the sheets, pulling them tight around her body and wills herself to fall asleep.

Naturally, that doesn’t work out.

She’s been staring at the sliver of pale moonlight on the wall beside her window  for what feels like an eternity when there’s the faint sound of scratching. It’s intermittent at first but then grows louder until she’s certain there are small stones hitting against the glass. 

She’s also certain those small stones are being thrown by Jughead.

Betty glances at her phone beside her bed. The screen is blank - still turned off - and briefly, she considers turning it on in case there are messages.

(And then she considers what those messages might say, and so the phone remains unresponsive beside her lamp)

The stones continue to hit against her window and she folds her pillow over her head so she can no longer hear them. It works in drowning out the intended sound, but instead, her brain decides to play on loop all of the seemingly nice things Jughead has ever said to her. 

_ It’s not like you loved him,  _ Betty tells herself in a snatched moment of self-respect. _ It’s not like you loved him. _

(But, she knows, it wouldn’t have have taken her much longer to fall)

After what feels like an eternity, she finally relaxes her grip on the pillow over her head. She listens for a while but there’s no sound of stones against glass, and so, despite her better judgement, she goes to the window, twitching the drapes fractionally until she can see the ground below. 

He isn’t there.

Quietly, Betty pulls open her window and casts her gaze downwards to the asphalt. On it, she can see a scattering of little stones. There’s a lingering smell of cigarette smoke too (or maybe that’s just her imagination) and then, when she slides the window closed again, her gaze meets Archie’s. He isn’t wearing a shirt - there’s a soft light behind him that shows off the sculpture of his muscles - and his hair is messy. She wonders whether he might’ve been asleep; whether the sound might’ve woken him. 

She wonders whether he was the one who made Jughead leave.

Betty’s lips twitch like they’re remembering how to smile, and she smooths down her ponytail. Archie returns the gesture, running a hand through his hair which makes it stick up at even more odd angles and then raises his hand in a way she thinks might mean  _ goodnight.  _

She closes the drapes again and slides back under the sheets. 

She doesn’t sleep.

  
  
  
  
  


The following morning, Betty is well-aware of how terrible she looks. Her eyes are red and her skin is pale - almost grey - but she rises early enough to drag herself to the shower where she both shampoos and conditions her hair so at least  _ that _ part of her will look okay.

“Elizabeth,” her mom gasps when she finally comes downstairs. “You look dreadful!”

“Thanks,” Betty mumbles sarcastically, ignoring the array of breakfast foods in favour of a large mug of coffee. 

“Are you sure you can manage school? You didn’t even eat last night.”

“We have a test coming up,” she says by way of an answer. “And there’s a Valentines Dance meeting today.”

Polly shoots her a sympathetic look over the top of her glass of orange juice.

“Well perhaps you should stay home this weekend. You’ve been spending an awful amount of time at that diner with your friends - and so late, too.”

She thinks about the party Moose Mason is throwing this weekend and decides she’s going. If anything, it’ll be a distraction.

At school, it’s evident that the news of the bet is common knowledge. Betty ignores the looks of sympathy and the whispers (or, at least, she sinks her nails into her palms so she can focus on the pain of that instead) and takes her seat in literature class. Jughead isn’t yet there, nor does he arrive on time.

Ms Trewick begins the lesson and then, a little over five minutes into the discussion regarding Biblical parallels in East of Eden, the door opens and both Jughead and Toni enter.

The atmosphere shifts and she suddenly feels as though she’s in a movie. Toni takes her seat quickly but Jughead is slower, catching her eye as his long fingers wrap around his bag strap.

“I don’t know how your school ran on the South Side, Mr Jones; Miss Topaz, but here, we don’t tolerate tardiness. You’ve each earned yourself a detention.”

Throughout the lesson, Betty stares at the back of Jughead’s neck, watching the muscles in his jaw twitch and his hands clench and wondering if the red rims around his eyes are because he hasn’t slept, or if they’re down to something else.

When the bell rings, he waits for her, tugging at her sleeve when she tries to walk past.

“Can we talk?”

“About what?” she asks. “The prize you won for sleeping with me?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he says quietly, pleading with his eyes. But he’s an actor - she knows that now - and she refuses to fall for it a second time. 

“No?”

“Betts, please let me explain.” His voice cracks on the second syllable, but she folds her arms resolutely. He doesn’t get to call her that. Doesn’t get to make her heart leap just by shortening her name. “I really do like you.  _ More _ than like you.”

She allows herself to laugh, the burst of air leaving her lips feeling foreign. Fake. “I have gym class.”

She tries to turn but he’s still holding her cuff. She can feel his fingers against the underside of her wrist and she’s mad that her skin has broken into goosebumps. “I came over last night.”

She doesn’t answer.

“The garage was locked.”

This time, she shrugs.

“I’m sorry.”

His eyes are glassy but she refuses to believe they contain tears. And then, abruptly, she thinks of the fact that his mom left, taking his little sister with him, leaving him to ask his alcoholic father why she left him behind.  _ Did she forget me, dad? _ He’d asked. Betty had been sitting at their kitchen table when Mr Jones had told her that, and then mumbled that he still doesn’t know how to answer that.

But bad things happen to people all the time, she tells herself. Not everybody uses someone else’s virginity for a bet.  

She looks back at him and tugs her arm free. She says nothing.

  
  
  
  
  


Jughead visits her house each night, throwing stones until finally, on Friday evening, he stops. Betty lays awake, waiting for the scratching against the glass; the faint roar of a motorcycle; the click of a lighter, but none of those sounds come. 

She wonders where he is (and then, naturally, who he’s with) and falls into a dream where there’s no bet and her mom doesn’t forbid her from dating and she waits for the doorbell signalling Jughead picking her up for the Valentines Dance. 

The following evening is Moose’s party. Since the escalation of her relationship with Jughead (if she can even _ call _ it a relationship) it’s been assumed that she attends these events now. It  _ does  _ make her feel more like Polly, but in turn, she’d thought  _ that _ would feel good.

Instead, it feels a little hollow. Betty wonders whether her sister has the same feeling.

Polly tells their parents they’re heading out to girls’ night at Ethel Muggs’ house, which is pure enough not to arouse suspicion, and they hide their outfits beneath yoga pants and large sweaters, with shoes inside of their overnight bags. Betty, of course, doesn’t plan on sleeping anywhere other than her bed, but she’s had a sneaking suspicion for a while now that Polly may like Chuck Clayton. 

She doesn’t bring it up on the count that she doesn’t want her sister to feel judged (though, as far as Betty’s concerned, she has no right to judge  _ anyone _ ) and when they reach the end of their steps, Reggie Mantle pulls up outside of the house next door. He honks the horn and no more than ten seconds later, Archie is jumping down his own front steps.

Betty hopes her mom hasn’t heard the noise and doesn’t dare look back to see if the drapes are twitching. 

“Hey,” Archie says, frowning when he catches sight of their outfits. “You’re not coming to Moose’s?”

“We are,” Polly replies, jerking her head back at their house. “Strict parents. They think we’re having girls’ night.”

Archie grins. “You want a lift?”

Betty looks at her sister, wondering if she too is working out that the can likely change in the back of the car once they get to the party. It’ll save their hands from getting quite so numb too. Polly nods and Betty replies,

“Sure. Thanks.”

They climb into the back of the Honda and Reggie speeds off before they’ve gotten their seatbelts fastened. 

Moose’s house is nowhere near the grandeur of Thornhill, nor as film-set-esque as the Whyte Wyrm, and when they arrive, there aren’t yet many other people there. Reggie leaves Polly the keys to his car so that they can change out of their cover clothes on the backseat without anyone seeing.  

It doesn’t take long to find Archie and Reggie in the kitchen once they’re done - the house really isn’t particularly large - and Betty pours herself a drink into a red solo cup. Archie, who’s just tapping the keg, looks at her briefly as though he’s about to say something, but then must decide against it. He fills his own cup, takes a large gulp and then raises his hand as though in cheers. Betty responds by raising her own cup, and they both drink again awkwardly.

Moose’s house fills up pretty quickly. It’s so packed that at first, she doesn’t see the Serpents, but then Sweet Pea’s head and shoulders become visible in the living room - taller than anyone else - and her chest does something strange where it sort-of constricts and expands at the same time. Her breathing feels somewhat laboured; loud and ragged in her ears above the thumping of her pulse. She clutches her cup tighter, so tight that her knuckles turn white, and then the crowd parts enough that she can see Jughead. He’s standing by the fireplace with a cup of his own, his tattooed left hand curled around the plastic as his other rests by his side whilst Ginger Lopez runs a finger down his chest. He doesn’t look to be enjoying it, shifting away from her touch, but still.  _ Still. _

Betty isn’t ready to feel jealousy above all other emotions, and that in turn makes her mad. He looks up then, meeting her eyes instantly, and she notes the redness around the rims is still there. He pulls away from Ginger so fast that she almost falls over, and steps towards Betty, running his right hand through his hair. It flops back down over his eyes and her hand reaches up on instinct to push that wave back. When she realises what she’s about to do, she snatches it back to her side.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she tells him before he has the chance to say anything.

“I know,” he murmurs. 

Over his shoulder, she sees Ginger watching them. “You haven’t wasted any time.”

Just then, she feels someone by her side; warm breath by her ear. “You okay Betty?” It’s Archie checking in, and she watches Jughead’s jaw muscles tick as she nods.

It takes him a while to say anything, but finally, his voice is low and cold when he utters the words, “Of course.”

  
  
  
  
  


Despite expecting him to leave, Betty finds Jughead remains at the party, mostly on his own. Toni catches her in the bathroom line, and looks sincerely apologetic when she says,

“I know it was an awful thing, but it’s not entirely what it sounded like.”

She doesn’t want to hear it, but the other girl continues.

“He cares, Betty. And he feels terrible.”

She folds her arms. “You expect me to just forgive him because he’s  _ Jughead Jones  _ and he feels bad?”

“No,” Toni replies honestly. “But I just thought you should know, whatever you guys were before… Monday… that wasn’t because of a bet.”

“I don’t need the bathroom anymore,” Betty mumbles, and turns on her heel, pushing past the other party-goers until she’s downstairs. There, she bumps into Archie, who catches her before she falls flat on her face.

“You okay?” he asks.

She pulls her gaze up to look at his face, kind and sincere in the way he’s asking her, and she says, “When I saw you coming back from your run, and Jughead was dropping me off, you were going to tell me something. And before that, you said _ be careful there.  _ Why?”

Archie looks around, seems to sigh and then takes her gently by the elbow until they’re outside. 

“Did you know?” she asks him. “About… about what I was to him?”

“I overheard something,” he admits. “But not enough to know…. Look, Betty, I just think you deserve better than…”

“Than Jughead?”

From the corner of her eye, she spots the very boy in question, dragging on a cigarette a few yards away. She wonders if he’s heard.

She almost hopes he has.

“Than that world,” Archie finishes. Over his shoulder, Jughead catches her eye, and with fingers she now realises are trembling, she pulls Archie towards her by his letterman jacket. Their lips meet and she can taste beer on his tongue.

The wall against her back is damp but she tries to ignore it, moving her mouth in a rhythmic pattern until Archie pulls away. He says something, but the words are lost somewhere in the air as she watches Jughead walk away.

  
  
  
  
  


Reggie drops them both off not outside of their houses, but further up the street, just incase the sound of the car’s engine or the closing of the doors alert Alice. Polly is staying out - at Chuck’s, Betty assumes - and so it’s just her and Archie walking along the sidewalk once the Honda has sped off.

“Earlier,” he starts, “outside…”

“I don’t know what it was,” she replies. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “Don’t be.”

They walk in silence until they reach the bottom of Betty’s steps. 

“You sneaking in through the window?” Archie asks, and then must realise his mistake. “Sorry. I saw him do it a few times, that’s all.”

“I locked the garage,” she finds herself saying. “He can’t climb up anymore.”

“Yeah.” There’s a pregnant pause. “Look, Betty -”

She cuts him off with her mouth on his. For a moment, he appears startled, but then kisses her back. His lips are cold - the wind is bitter - and hers feel a little numb too. When they break apart, it takes a little while to catch her breath.

“If you want,” he says, “you can come inside.”

She thinks of Ginger Lopez’s hand on Jughead’s chest, and the way he’d said  _ of course  _ in the hallway at Moose’s party, and the way his friends had all been laughing about her in the common room. She thinks about the fact she was a bet. She thinks about Polly and Jason and then Polly and Chuck Clayton. She thinks about the fact that Archie has been watching Jughead come and go; thinks, maybe he’s been watching out for her all week.

She nods. “Okay.”

  
  
  
  
  


Later, when she’s lying in Archie’s bed, Betty spots a postcard tucked behind a book on his shelf. It depicts two dandelion clocks - black on a white background - with their feather-like seeds drifting across the card. She stares at it for a while, listening to the sound of Archie’s even breaths beside her, and then draws back the sheets carefully so as not to wake him. 

She collects her clothes from the floor and redresses quickly. Archie is still fast asleep as she picks up her shoes, and so, without any real reason, she takes the postcard from behind the book. It’s blank on the back and she tucks it into her purse before creeping downstairs and out of the back door. 

It’s now definitely late enough that Betty can use the front door key hidden beneath the potted plant for her own house, and she sneaks in as quietly as she can. There are no lights on - nothing to signal that her parents are still awake - and she makes it up to her room without incident. 

She closes the drapes and climbs into bed with the postcard in her hand. The dandelion clocks seem to move (or maybe that’s just the vodka) and she can’t help but wonder whether life itself is simply just a way to pass the time.


	9. Redemption

_It was to get revenge,_ Jughead tells himself. _Make him pay. Make him feel as bad as she did. Does._

It worked.

All weekend, he thinks of nothing other than Betty’s lips on Archie’s; the way she’d caught his eye over the star athlete’s shoulder; the way he’d leant his body against hers.

His mouth tastes sour and he can’t help but wonder whether _Archie_ will be the one climbing in through her bedroom window at night.

By the time he arrives at school on Monday morning, he’s existed on pretty much no sleep, and he wonders whether he’s imagining the spectacle in the parking lot.

There’s a girl he’s never seen before - raven-haired with dark, almond eyes - sashaying her way across the asphalt towards the steps in front of the main entrance. It is, Jughead decides, like a scene from a movie. Almost everyone is looking - including him.

(And, judging from the way her head is held high, she knows it.)

He discovers more about her during first period. Her name is Veronica Lodge “of Lodge Industries” she adds, as though it’s supposed to mean something other than _I have money._ Who knows - maybe it isn’t.

Because this is the North Side, Veronica has been assigned a chaperone like the school board assumes she can’t manage to navigate the hallways and social rules alone. If there’s anyone who looks like they’d be okay, Jughead figures it’ll be _this_ girl.

Her chaperone though - in a twist of irony - is none other than Betty, who doesn’t so much guide her around as answer a barrage of questions. He only realises he’s staring when Veronica narrows her eyes at him, and then, with no attempt to be discreet, asks Betty,

“So what happened with you and the brooding bad boy over there?”

Betty looks over at him, her lips in a thin, straight line, and he can’t quite seem to look away. “He bet his friends he could sleep with me,” she says without any kind of warning, and despite every effort he feels his face ignite with shame.

“What an asshole,” Veronica replies staring directly at him with a cold expression. “I guess some guys _still_ think their sex enables them to make the rules.”

Jughead slams his textbook closed and grabs his bag, slinging it over his shoulder and almost knocking over Ms Trewick on his way out of the door.

“Mr Jones!” She shouts. “You’ll be earning yourself yet another detention if you don’t return to this classroom!”

For the first time in his life, he thinks he might just understand the reason his dad drinks. Perhaps half a bottle of whiskey would stop him feeling like this.

  
  
  
  


“I’m going for food,” Sweet Pea announces, throwing down his textbook onto the sticky wood of the Wyrm Hole’s counter. “You want anything?”

Jughead shakes head head. “No.”

“C’mon man,” his friend coaxes. “I can see if T has waffles - it _is_ Saturday.”

“I’m not hungry,” he replies, head down and gaze focused on the design of the feather he’s working on. He can practically hear the shrug Sweet Pea gives, but he ignores that too, along with the bang of the door as he leaves.

Not more than a few minutes later, the gravel crunches outside - car tyres. He thinks little of it, and when there’s a sweep of freezing air, Jughead barely looks up from his sketch. But then - _then_ \- there’s the slightest hint of strawberries.

“Betty?”

“I’d like a tattoo,” she says flatly.

She’d dressed all in pastel, much like she had been the very first time she’d come here, and his mouth runs dry. “We uh… we have some books of designs -”

“- I know what I want,” she tells him. Her words are quiet but they still feel like bullets.

He nods. “Okay.”

“There’s a form for me to sign, right?”

He nods again. “Right.”

She waits for him to bring it to her, then quickly fills it out in perfectly neat block capitals as per the request at the top of the page.

“Sweet Pea won’t be long - he’s just -”

“-I’d like you to do it.”

Jughead swallows and fights the urge to press his hands over his ears to stop the ringing; to stop the incessant burning. “I don’t usually work the gun.”

Her mouth makes the shape of an ‘oh’, but he’s not convinced the sound actually comes out.

“I can talk through the design with you?”

Betty nods, her mouth twitching into what at first glance might appear to be a smile, but it doesn’t stay there.

“Take a seat,” he says, indicating the chair before turning over his sketch pad for a clean piece of paper. “What uh… what would you like?”

“A dandelion clock,” she replies. “With a few of the seeds… scattered, I guess.”

He has so many questions he wants to ask: why a tattoo? Why _this_ tattoo? Why here? Why him? He remains silent, but picks up his pen.

Almost instantly though, he puts it down again to ask the next question. “Where?”

He doesn’t expect her to lift the soft, pink material of her sweater so that her skin is exposed all the way up to the bottom of her bra, and the lump in his throat threatens to choke him. Pressing with her fingers against her ribs, she whispers,

“Here.”

“And...” he swallows. “And the size?”

She indicates two inches with her forefinger and thumb, and Jughead sets to work. He can tell she isn’t watching him as he draws, and for that he’s relieved. Occasionally, he pauses, overwhelmed by everything he wants to say to her but can’t seem to, and then, somehow, he manages to continue until finally he’s sketched the last drifting seed.

His neck is sore and he sinks his fingers into the muscles as he straightens up. “It’s uh… it’s finished.”

He thinks he might hear a gasp escape Betty’s lips as she looks at the design. Her fingers reach out to trace the tiny scattered stalks, and Jughead wants so desperately to take her hand in his; bring her fingertips up to his lips; breathe the words _I’m sorry_ against her skin.

“That’s,” she starts, and then clears her throat. “That’s… good.”

“Pea shouldn’t be much longer.”

There’s a pause, but then Betty says, quietly, “I’d rather it was you.”

Yet again, he nods. “You sure?”

There’s an echo of a bed spring somewhere; her breath in his ear; the ghost of her fingertips on his skin. “Yes.”

He loads the gun with the clean needle and switches it on. “Your sweater,” he starts. “Can you uh….”

It’s too cold for her to remove it, and Jughead thinks he might almost be glad. He watches Betty fold the material so it sits neatly at the edge of her bra, and then he takes one of the sterile wipes, smoothing it gently over her ribs. She sucks in a breath and he watches goosebumps erupt.

“I’ll draw out the design first,” he tells her. “Before I use the gun.”

Sweet Pea doesn’t return. The two of them sit in silence save for the whirr of the machine. The air is so heavy, weighing down so oppressively on him that he can no longer stand it. “It’s the Valentine’s Dance on Friday, right?”

“Why?” she asks, bitterness in her tone. “Are you coming?”

Jughead doesn’t answer, just focuses on the final inked seed floating across her ribcage. She sucks in another breath as the gun pierces her skin, and he places the pad of his thumb against the goosebumps there.

“I don’t go to dances.”

A puff of air leaves her nose in the way that only rich people can make happen. He wonders, sometimes, whether skills like this are taught in kindergarten, or if they’re just an inherent quality that’ll only ever be present if your household income exceeds $80,000.

“Why are you here, Betty?”

“I wanted a tattoo.”

“So it’s not as a punishment?” he asks, sliding his thumb around the sore skin, pressing down lightly between her ribs so that she gasps in the way she used to when they were together. “So it’s not to show me what other guys are going to see when you’re with them? What people like _Archie Andrews_ will see?”

Her cheeks flame and she yanks down her sweater. Jughead pulls his hand away. “How much for the tattoo?”

He waves her away. “Nothing.”

“I don’t want to owe you, Jughead.”

He can feel the muscle in his jaw tick involuntarily. “One hundred.”

“Fine.”

She produces two crisp fifties from her purse and holds them out for him to take.

“You’ll need to apply cream,” he tells her. “It’ll be sore.”

Her finds her a small white tube of lotion and when she takes it, her fingers brush his. Briefly, he wonders what the marks on her palms are - shadows, or something else? Maybe he should ask.

(He doesn’t)

Betty rises from the chair, smoothing down her clothes despite the fact there are no creases. There are _never_ creases. “Thank you,” she says.

From the moment she leaves the parlour, all he thinks about is her skin: its colour; its softness; the way it always smells like strawberries.

_The dance,_ he thinks. _He_ has _to go to the dance._

  
  
  
  


A little less than a week later, Jughead stands in front of Toni’s mirror, brushing invisible specks of dust off of the borrowed suit he’s wearing. _Maybe this is why rich people do that smoothing-creases thing all the time,_ he thinks: _it’s instinct in these clothes._

“You look good,” Toni says, moving in front of him to straighten his tie which, admittedly, is incredibly wonky. “Very smart.”

“I can’t remember the last time I tucked in a shirt,” he admits. “I’m kind of nervous.”

Toni raises an eyebrow. “Kind of?”

He manages a half-smile and she dusts his shirt down. “There.”

“Thanks.”

They stand beside each other, staring at their reflection. “I hope it works out,” Toni says, and he nods. “Yeah.”

They travel together to Riverdale High’s parking lot, leaving the truck beside a Pontiac that seems mocking in its cleanliness. Toni loops her arm through his as they walk towards the gymnasium, and just before they enter through the token balloon arch, Jughead squeezes her hand.

“You look great Toni. Cheryl’s... lucky, I guess.” He shakes his head. “She _is._ She’s lucky.”

His friend shrugs, but there’s a wide smile on her face. “Go get your girl, Jughead Jones.”

He first spots her by the punch. He hopes for her sake that nobody has spiked it, but this is a high school dance and he wouldn’t put it past someone like Chuck or Reggie to have added a little something extra.

(If Fangs or Sweet Pea were here, he’d know for _certain_ not to drink it)

Still, warning her seems hypocritical, so he remains on the sidelines with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets so they won’t keep tugging his beanie down.

He knows she’s seen him. Knows from the blush in her cheeks and the way she quickly looks away as their eyes lock that she’s been watching him too, and Jughead begins to wonder whether this whole thing might actually work.

He waits until close to the end; until there have been short speeches thanking the Valentine’s Dance committee, which he’s surprised to learn is an actual thing, and Betty has stood up on stage with her fellow planners to be clapped in front of everyone. Then, when all is still relatively quiet, he steps onto the stage and takes hold of the microphone. It screeches horribly and there’s a chorus of groans, but, ultimately, he has everyone’s attention.

And Betty is right there in front of him, next to Veronica who doesn’t seem to have left her side since she arrived from the city.

“I just want to say,” he begins, scrunching his free hand to press some of the tension he’s feeling into his fingers. “I did something bad... to someone good.” There’s a long pause as he realises that Veronica has crossed her arms, already skeptical, and she whispers something to the girl he’s desperate to make understand how much he means this. “You didn’t deserve it,” he says, looking solely at Betty. “I could’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. And I should have.”

He can see her entire body jerk upwards, like she’s searching for a breath she can’t find.

“I’ve never been to a single dance before, but I’m here for you,” he says, heart thumping and ears burning to their very tips. “I think I might love you, Betty Cooper.”

Her eyes are glassy and his voice feels like it might not last, but he asks his question. “Can you forgive me?”

He wants to hold his hand out towards her; whisper, _just say okay baby,_ and then take her home and kiss her goodnight: do it right this time - the way the movies show you’re supposed to. He can almost feel her breath as he stares at her, noting in his peripheral vision the eye-darting of everyone in the room.

Her answer - when it finally comes - is whispered, and yet somehow deafening at the same time. “No.”

She runs, bolting across the gymnasium and out of the fire exit, and Jughead can only stand there on the makeshift stage, staring at the space in which she’d been standing.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

  


* * *

  


She cries when she reaches the parking lot. _It’s not fair,_ she thinks. _None of it is fair._

She wants to do it over: go into the Wyrm Hole for the very first time; not fall for his line about the charity bake sale; wants to say, in that truck of his, _you should take me on a date first;_ wants to stand up to her parents and say, _that boy I’m tutoring? I like him._

Of course, it’s all too late.

It’s not long before she’s joined by Veronica. Her heels on the asphalt give her away, and she drapes a jacket around Betty’s shoulders.

“Did Holden Caulfield just reenact a scene from every teen movie?”

_Yes,_ she thinks. _And that’s the problem._

“And I thought this town would be dull after the bright lights of Manhattan.”

“Everything here is magnified,” Betty says finally. “The city hides things.”

The brunette folds her arms across her chest. “Not a wiser word has been spoken.”

“I wish I’d noticed it before now.”

They stand in silence for a while save for the odd sniff of tears, until Veronica says, gently,

“Why don’t you come back inside? You must be freezing.”

She shrugs off the jacket and hands it back, realising only at that point that it’s Archie’s. She thinks of the night of Moose Mason’s party; thinks of Archie’s bed and his hands - gentle in the way Jughead’s weren’t; gentle in the way she didn’t want them to be - and then says,

“Did he tell you?”

“Did who tell me what?”

“Archie,” Betty replies. “Did he tell you we hooked up the weekend before you moved here?”

Veronica shakes her head. “It’s none of my business.”

“I think,” she starts, sliding her hands up her arms to stave off the cold. “I think I regret it.”

The other girl frowns. “Why?”

“I only did it for two reasons. Neither of them was that I really wanted to.”

There’s a long pause. A crow caws overhead and in the distance, a car honks its horn.

“What were they?” Veronica asks. “Your reasons?”

“Jealousy. I was jealous. I wanted to make _Jughead_ jealous.”

“And the second?”

“Control. So I’d have something else to think about. So _I_ was the one who got to choose who I had sex with.” Betty slides her hands back down her arms, but the cold and her goosebumps are winning.

“You didn’t pick Jughead?”

“He picked me.”

“Okay,” Veronica contemplates. “But you made a decision too, right? You said that you went to his house? You agreed to do… whatever you did... with him. You made that decision Betty, whatever the reason. You picked him too.”

There’s another pause and she thinks about all of the choices she _has_ made.

Leaving the window unlocked; the garage door unlocked; leading him into that closet during seven minutes in heaven. The lingerie; the lingerie.

The lingerie.

“You sure you won’t come back inside?”

“I think I’ll just go home,” she replies. “I’m so tired, Veronica.”

Her friend nods, “Okay,” and squeezes her shoulder gently as she turns to leave. “Call me if you need anything.”

Betty manages a grateful smile, not sure how the girl she’s known for only five days can understand so much. “Thank you.”

  
  
  
  


There are no cars in Pop’s parking lot when Betty finds herself passing, and the neon lights in the window seem to beckon her inside. It’s oddly comforting - the harsh glow against the pastel backdrop - and the doorbell’s chime welcomes her when she steps inside.

Pop is in his usual spot behind the counter, wiping it down despite the fact that she’s pretty sure it’s never _ever_ been dirty. He smiles kindly at her, and then asks,

“What can I get for you?”

“A milkshake please,” she replies. “Strawberry.”

His smile grows and he nods, not directly at her, but towards the end of the diner. “I’ll bring it over.”

Betty turns her head to the left and spots Jughead seated in the farthest booth. He’s facing away from her, and she considers turning around quickly; leaving before he sees.

And then he turns his head.

No matter how hard she tries, she can’t drop her gaze from his. It feels like magnets are pulling her towards his booth - the same one she’s sat in with him several times before - and before she can stop herself, she’s beside his table.

Her voice is barely audible. “Hi.”

He swallows visibly and grits out, “Hi.” His fingers are wrapped so tightly around his coffee cup that they’re white. She slides in opposite him, wanting to prize the cup from his hands.

She doesn’t.

“I want to hate you,” she tells him quietly.

Jughead’s jaw tightens. “You should.”

“I know.”

Pop arrives at their table almost silently, and slides a large basket of chili fries between them. “On the house,” he says.

“Thanks Pop,” they both reply at the same time.

Jughead stares at her for a moment and then shrugs himself out of his jacket. “Please take it,” he says, holding out the fleece-lined sherpa. She wonders briefly where the usual leather one is. “You’re cold.”

Tentatively, she takes the jacket. “Thank you.”

More time passes, during which they eat the fries: Betty, one at a time; Jughead, small handfuls until Pop returns with her strawberry milkshake. He refills Jughead’s coffee and leaves them to it.

“I don’t like who I am,” she hears the boy opposite admit in barely more than a whisper.

Betty looks up, but he’s staring down at the formica. Her fingers curl inward. “I don’t think I _know_ who _I_ am.”

He does look up at that, the corner of his mouth lifting ever-so-slightly. “Me neither.” His hand reaches towards the basket of fries, but he doesn’t take one. “I _am_ sorry Betty,” he says. “I didn’t mean for everything … it started out as a bet but …” he rubs roughly at the back of his neck. “That’s not what it was by the end. It should never have been a bet in the first place.”

She nods, and then lets the words spill from her mouth. “I kissed Archie to make you jealous.”

Jughead swallows. “It worked.”

“And then I… we slept together.”

It’s a long time before he says anything. Her instinct is to apologise and fill the silence, but she knows she doesn’t have to. Knows, if anything, it’s _Archie_ who deserves her apology. (She thinks, albeit very quietly in the back of her mind, that perhaps she was simply doing what she’s entitled to do as a confused sixteen-year-old, so maybe she doesn’t have to apologise to _anyone_ )

“Do you think,” he begins, and then reaches up to his crown, removing the grey beanie to clutch in his fists. “Maybe we could start over?”

He looks so earnest in the way he’s watching her, waiting for her response as though it might be everything. It takes a while to form the words; to sift through all of the thoughts and the debris of whatever the hell they were before.

But then she takes a breath and extends her hand across the table. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Betty Cooper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to take this opportunity to thank every one of you who’s commented positively, left kudos, bookmarked and reblogged this story on Tumblr. You make being a part of this fandom very special.  
> This fic has gained some (dare I say it) notoriety in the fandom due to the topics and the behaviour of some characters. I haven’t addressed any of the negative comments, nor have I gotten into any arguments with anybody because I didn’t want to waste my time and energy on that aspect. However, below is my rationale for writing this story in the way I have. Read it if you want, or ignore it - I don’t mind.  
> Once again, thank you for your positivity.  
> Jughead as a ‘bad boy’: His behaviour is partly (predominantly, at times) chosen. He chooses to show off to his friends, almost trying to play a character they expect him to be as the son of their gang’s leader. Sometimes Jughead’s behaviour is a reaction to events where he doesn’t know how to cope (falling in love being the big one)  
> Betty as the not-so-innocent perfect girl next door: She has no idea who she is. She’s trying to be like her sister who she perceives to have had this amazing relationship back in New York. She wants to be a ‘somebody’ but very obviously doesn’t know how to go about this.  
> Drunk sex: it happens. It doesn’t necessarily mean one or both parties are being taken advantage of. This story is set in high school, where casual sex is often prevalent (at least, it certainly was in mine) and often happens after a party/social event where there is alcohol. Aside from when I (and many people I’ve talked to throughout the course of this story) was in a relationship, all sex I had was under the influence of alcohol. I wanted it every time. I was not taken advantage of.  
> These characters often don’t make the best choices because sometimes they don’t know what those choices are. Sometimes, they’re overwhelmed by their surroundings and/or peer pressure. Sometimes they’re hurting. Sometimes, as a reaction to that hurt, they want to hurt others.  
> I wrote this story as a challenge to myself. Could I create a story in which the characters were not the traditional fanfiction ‘perfect people’, but flawed and (in my opinion) more true-to-life? Maybe I haven’t succeeded in some people’s opinions, but I have enjoyed the challenge all the same.  
> I don’t advocate the behaviour some characters here, but I (and so many others) have lived it. The only apology I’m going to make is for my tagging - where it might not have been as helpful as it could have been.  
> Thank you to anyone still reading this, and thank you specifically to AlisonCollis (find her on Tumblr) who’s been my sounding board, my playlist creator and my beta.  
> Much love, Gracie x

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are HUGELY appreciated.  
> Find me on Tumblr at @itsindiansummer13


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